The Long Way Home
by the general girl
Summary: Sakura finds Sasuke again in Wind Country five years after the war, when he is supposed to be dead and she is supposed to be beyond caring. Neither have been very good at meeting expectations. — SasuSaku
1. Part I

**a/n:** Editing these one-liner a/n's in so the stupid "share" links don't mess up my centering. D:

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><p><strong>The Long Way Home<strong>**  
><strong>_(for Unicorn Paige)_

****Part I****

"We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams."  
>Jeremy Irons<p>

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><p>Haruno Sakura sees Uchiha Sasuke again in Wind Country five years after the war.<p>

She is in a crowded teashop, sitting alone at her own table in the corner, back to the wall, enjoying a stick of dango after a successful mission to heal some lord or another. The treat is sticky in her mouth and she is down to the last green ball when he enters.

He is older and taller and just as heart rendingly beautiful as she remembers. But it can't be him, absolutely cannot be Uchiha Sasuke because he was supposed to have _died_ five years ago. And it also _cannot_ be him because that boy, that _man _that just walked through the door is smiling and laughing and _god_ she'd never seen him so relaxed before, never seen the perpetual wards he threw around himself obliterated quite like this.

Maybe it is just a cruel coincidence. Maybe Uchiha Sasuke had a twin. Maybe this was chakra depletion and hallucinations or genjutsu aimed at reopening old wounds that'd never really healed.

But no, he is striding up to the counter to order and that innate grace, that fluidity of movement, it is all as she remembers. But, but the cook is sliding him a plate of tempura and another of dango and it cannot be Sasuke because he'd never liked sweets. It isn't for him though; instead he nudges it to someone else, someone that she hadn't noticed because when Uchiha Sasuke walks into a room without any regard for the fact that he was supposed to have _died_, her attention has no room for anything else.

It is a girl, and she is petite and soft and all rounded civilian curves with hair the lightest shade of brown and she is smiling at him, smiling at _her-hers and Naruto's_-Sasuke-kun. The thought startles her enough that the already lax grip she has on her dango loosens so that the entire stick falls to the ground.

She has not used that name, has not uttered that name in conjunction with that suffix in many years.

The food lies forgotten on the floor as Sakura gets up, rising from the table with a rattle and a scrape loud enough to dampen the conversation around her, but she doesn't care, can't care about things like public propriety when Sasuke, when _Sasuke-kun_ is alive and well and in the same room as she and _he is laughing with some other girl, with some stranger that is not them and it hurts._ It hurts because it's apparent that he's finally found happiness and it is not with her or Naruto or Kakashi-sensei and definitely not within the walls of their respective home (it hurts even more, she thinks, for her to see him first with a _girl_).

(And Sakura knows that it is petty and selfish and wrong to have thought that but _god dammit_, despite all her growth, Sasuke will always be her one weak front.)

She stands there, over her table, and soon even the entire room is silent, the people eyeing her strangely, expectantly because they can see the headband and know she is a shinobi and shinobi are known to snap. He is the last to turn, only noticing when the girl he is with—and her chest tightens at this—stills and tugs on his sleeve.

And then her surprise is slowly sliding into anger. Because this is a reminder that he'd abandoned them all a second time, in the worst possible way. He'd left them all to think him dead, left _Naruto _to think that for five years his best friend, that the closest thing to a brother he'd ever had had died because of a blow meant for him. The anger is strong and biting and crushes the surprise. For a second, all she can see is the red of indignation and wounded hearts. Then she is calm again, calm with a razor sharp edge, green eyes narrowing, and waits, anticipating the recognition that would flash across his eyes when their gazes finally met.

She hopes, for his sake, that she will be able to find even the barest hint of remorse or regret.

(Maybe, even of warmth.)

But Sasuke is achingly slow to turn around, and sometimes she has been called an impatient woman (especially in areas concerning _him_). When he finally does, his eyes slide, slow and languid, from the tips of her toes to the pink of her hair—she would have blushed, except, except—

(Her breath quickens and her fingers gouge deep into the wood of the table.)

When she looks into limpid dark eyes for the first time in five years, Sakura nearly breaks.

There is nothing in them but blank curiosity.

And Sakura won't have that; she _refuses_ this thing that is worse than his familiar brand of apathy; refuses to fade into the non-specificity of the strangers around her because—

(Because she is not a stranger. Will never be no matter how hard he tries. Because she has knotted the breaks in their bonds over and over again, weaved in new pieces of herself so that it will become something _nobody_ can unbind.)

Her steps are light and quick, maybe even as fast as he used to be the last she'd seen him in battle, and her grasp on the front of his plain black shirt rough as she yanks him up by the collar. The girl screams a little, in fear, and Sakura is shocked, shocked when there is no sword pressed against her throat, no chidori slammed through her ribs. Instead Sasuke looks _alarmed_, like he actually has something to be afraid of, like he has no idea how to fight back.

Sakura cannot believe, _will not_ believe this Sauske unguarded enough to be caught, this Sasuke that would allow his emotions to play so clearly across his eyes.

"_God dammit_," she spits into the quiet, "You are _not, _you are _not—_who the _fuck_ are you and what the hell have you done with _Sasuke-kun_?"

She usually doesn't abuse profanity, she is usually the calm one, the rational one, the one who would look whoever Naruto was offending in the eye and offer polite, meaningless apologies.

This raw, snarling woman—this isn't her.

"Let Kun-chan go! Just because you're some high and mighty _ninja_ doesn't mean you can harass anyone you want!"

Sakura's eyes flicker away from Sasuke's face at the girl's outburst, eyebrows scrunching at the name. She expects Sasuke to scoff, to scowl at the honorific, but instead all he does is shove at her arms. There is strength in his push but it isn't nearly enough, nonetheless she lets the hold loosen all the same, stepping back and raking over his body with critical eyes.

He is wearing loose fitting pants tucked into well-worn boots with the plain black t-shirt. There is no kunai holster or shuriken pack strapped around his thigh or tied around his waist, no sword resting against his back. For all intents and purposes, he looks like a civilian.

Instinctively, her senses expand and reach out for his chakra, probing for the dark, dense coils of power that'd always been his signature, but what she does encounter is nothing like what she expects. Yes, the distinctive feel of Sasuke's chakra is there, but it is muffled and dulled, layered so deep within him that she could only detect the faintest tendrils, feel the most tentative touches of strength.

When he speaks, his voice is the same rich timber that she sometimes dreams of.

"Who are you?"

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><p>Sakura can't help but fidget at the surrealism of the moment. She is sitting underneath a blooming apple tree, legs primly tucked under her skirt with Sasuke not two feet away and he is<em>smiling<em>at her. And even though the smile is polite and distant and the exact same one she gives to acquaintances on the street Sakura is fascinated, is thrilled and devastated at this change in his personality.

The man next to her is still cool and reserved, but it was as if all the sharp edges and hurtful corners he'd gained throughout his life had been smoothed over by sandpaper. The change is unnerving, terrifying, and almost bittersweet because this is Sasuke as he could've, as he _should've_ been. The Sasuke that might have existed if a certain mission had never been given many years before or they'd been strong enough to keep him in Konoha.

Instead, she has to sit underneath falling white petals as her first love recounts how he'd woken up in a small hospital in a no-name village with no memories of his previous life. She watches him as he speaks and picks out his tells; the way his head cocks slightly to the left when recounting something especially difficult or the way his lips tighten into a thin line if he has a particularly hard time remembering something. She can tell when he's frustrated by the set of his shoulders and when he is amused by the quirk of his eyebrow. All of these little fragments of the Sasuke-That-Was reassure her that this is the real thing, that even if he remembers nothing of her she can still recognize these small pieces of him.

That on some innate level she still _knew_ him.

"Amaya and her family found me in a ditch in Fire Country. According to her I was in pretty bad shape. They took me to the clinic in a nearby village and the doctors managed to patch me up."

"After that Kun-chan came home with us," the girl, _Amaya_, interrupts. Sakura blinks, pausing in her pursuit of Sasuke to take in the girl sprawled on the ground on the other side of the man. She is evidently a civilian, a feminine, outspoken slip of a girl that sat far too close to Sasuke for Sakura's liking. She is pretty, in a way, but Sakura can see the light sheen of makeup on her face and can't help but think that the beauty is only skin deep.

(It is not, she says firmly to herself, the jealousy speaking. He is safe and alive and unscarred and that, _that_, she pointedly reminds herself, is the only thing that matters.)

Sasuke only looks slightly perturbed by the interruption, eyes flickering over to the girl in mild amusement, "Aa. I had nowhere to go, and the Endo family was kind enough to take me in. I do the field work and help with any other odds and ends that I can take care of."

"I'm sorry for what happened in the tea house back there," Sakura apologized, "I was…surprised."

"I'll say," Amaya scoffs, and Sakura does not miss the way Sasuke's mouth twitches in restrained laughter.

Laughter. This girl has heard Sasuke-kun _laugh_, has seen sides of him that she and Naruto had fought tooth and nail to try and revive. Sakura is grateful that Endo Amaya saved Uchiha Sasuke's life, but she cannot deny the twinge of jealousy reverberating in her chest.

(The only person she cannot lie to is herself.)

"Did you," he paused, and she can see that he is choosing his words carefully, "Do you recognize me?"

The pink hair girl blinks, and her first instinct, her _need_, is pushing her to shout _yes, yes I do you are Uchiha Sasuke and you belong to Team Seven, you belong in Konoha with _us—_home home home please come home_.

But this is the Sasuke-That-Should've-Could've-Been, and he is _happy_. This Sasuke can laugh at jokes and smile at strangers. This Sasuke knows nothing of betrayal and heartbreak and the warm blood of his slaughtered parents staining his living room walls.

_This_ Sasuke would want to stay.

She is taking too long, she realizes, so she levels grass-green eyes at him and, smiling wanly, shakes her head no.

"I don't think so."

**tbc**

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><p><strong>an:** Part one of...something. Part one of definitely no more than five. This was originally supposed to be a 500 word drabble for Paige's prompt ("I've got dust in my mouth and a sting in my chest.") on the SasuSaku Month LJ comm (for a link, click my homepage, the event's open to non-LJ participants too!), but it just kept...growing on me. This will be updated almost daily until it's done. The idea might seem to be overdone, but I promise I'll try to take it in a newer direction.

And YES, Endo Ayama is an OC, and because I usually despise OC's I can safely say that she's not going to star in any large capacity other than a plot device nudge here and there. I hope you enjoyed it, and don't forget to leave a review with suggestions and concrit after you're done. :)


	2. Part II

**a/n: **Who else hates the ugly "to share" buttons?

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><p><strong>Part II<strong>

The trip home is long. Long enough for her to reflect on half-hearted metaphors and dwell far too much on his confused smile as she'd waved them goodbye.

"_I don't personally know you,"_ she'd said, voice steady, _"but, but I think I've seen you around my village before. Why don't I ask around when I get home, and I'll come back and tell you if I find something?"_

He'd nodded, and his slight smile had been so _grateful_, that Sakura had Known:

this is what she'd been training herself for, the culmination of all her medical expertise for this one man—this one metaphorical healing. She will be the one to pick up all the fragments of Uchiha Sasuke's life and piece them together again, and she would do it _right_. She will give him back just enough of the Sasuke-That-Was so that he will finally be at peace.

She will give him all the good she possibly can and keep all the dark, bloody secrets. She will lie, as she has done time and time again, if in the end everyone can come out just a little better for it,

(except to herself, she has _never_ been able to lie to herself)

even if she had to be the one to bear the burden of half-truths and deceit, even if in the end they will look upon her with unforgiving eyes.

Even if it meant she could not be a part of his life—because, because it would hurt too much, for him to _know_ what he'd meant to her and see him reject her another time, because when it came to Sasuke she doesn't want to be weak anymore—she would pull through.

She could do it.

He had said thank you to her once upon a time, and this will be the answer to the '_for what'_ that'd always plagued her mind since.

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><p>When Sakura walks through the gates of Konoha (rebuilt, as most everything were, courtesy of Tenzou), she greets the guards with a familiar smile and there is no strain in her steps. Her report to Tsunade is succinct and brief; she sees no point in mentioning Sasuke, at least not yet.<p>

Technically, he is a war criminal, and technically, if it turns out he was still alive he would be brought back to Konoha and executed. But Sakura doesn't think that Tsunade is cruel, and something tells her that if she'd told her shishou she would have understood because her mentor has lost _both_ her boys and known more than her fair share of pain and regrets.

But Sakura is not Naruto; Sakura has learned caution and the art of keeping quiet.

She does, however, ask for permission to leave the village for extended periods of time when she isn't on the active roster or helping with hospital duty. Tsunade had raised one elegant eyebrow in question but granted her request all the same, even when no explanation had been forthcoming.

There is trust and understanding when her teacher gruffly reminds her to not do anything stupid, because Sakura is not Naruto; Sakura has learned that to be a ninja meant that sometimes, you had to leave the façade of honor behind and soak your hands in more than just your enemy's blood.

She bows, deep and low, and leaves.

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><p>"What do you think the best parts of Sasuke-kun were?"<p>

Naruto chokes around a mouthful of ramen, blue eyes sharp when he swivels around his stool to stare at her.

Sakura hasn't touched her food, chopsticks in one hand idly swirling congealing noodles in cooling broth, the other propping up her chin as she watched him from the corner of her eye.

Teuchi and Ayame, for their parts, quickly beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen. Sakura pretends not to notice.

"Sa-Sakura-chan? Why now?"

Because they don't say his name much, and she hasn't used that suffix since the last time they both saw him alive.

Ignoring his question, she pressed on "I think, I think the best parts of him were his determination, and his drive, and in the end, his loyalty. I—"

"The bastard always knew how to push people, he made us—he made me stronger."

Naruto's voice is husky, and his eyes a deeper blue than usual when he speaks. Sakura smiles at him gratefully and thinks that maybe, even if he wasn't here, it will all turn out okay.

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><p>Sakura takes her time making her way back to the nondescript village, so that by the time she finally arrives, it has been two and a half months since the last time she has seen him. She still wears her combat gear even if it isn't necessary, because here, surrounded by civilians and people who'd only ever known peace, she needed to play the part of Shinobi.<p>

Surprisingly, Sasuke finds her first, and even though she's prepared herself, given herself more than enough time to be _ready_ and steady and sure it is still devastating when long fingers touch her lightly on the shoulder and she turns around only to be blasted by dark eyes and pale skin.

He murmurs her surname in greeting, lips lifting briefly before walking and gesturing for her to follow. Quietly, she tells herself that _Haruno-san_ on his lips had not hurt.

(And she will never get used to it; never get used to the softening of his eyes and the slant of his lips, all in conjunction with this new chasm of space, of years and distant politeness between them never never never never—)

He doesn't live too far away, the farm situated just barely on the outskirts of the village, but far enough that the main house cannot be called in the village proper. He isn't the one to tell her any of this though, she'd deduced it on her own based on the map he'd sketched her so few months ago.

Instead, the walk is made in (to her surprise) companionable silence. Her treads are soundless against the rough dirt road, and he'd apparently retained his own reticence for noise, movements as quiet and smooth as it'd ever been when he was a shinobi. It is almost reminiscent, Sakura thinks (wishes), of the rare times back during the last, great days of Team Seven, when it'd only been him and her on a red bridge, enjoying the silence of early morning as they waited for the rest of their team to arrive.

She takes a moment to admire him from behind, the gleam of sunlight making the black of his hair shine, the vulnerable white strip of skin at the nape of his neck and the smooth lines of his broad shoulders melting seamlessly into the hard planes of his back underneath a thin white shirt (white, not black this time, she notes).

This man, so beautiful and finally free of any lingering scars, this man would never be hers to have.

She can't help the wistful sigh that stirs the air around her lips, and the full implications of what she would be doing, the full implications of what she would _lose_ hits her with an ache so deep that she'd have been bowled over if she wasn't so accustomed to the suffocating weight.

(Naruto might have had the world on his shoulders, but he was hoisted fully on hers, on the blood that cakes her hands and stains her fingernails red. He doesn't know it, but she is the only one Tsunade trusts enough to send on those missions of subterfuge and dirty affairs. She has killed so many for him, killed and healed and killed again, from the ones that's tried to hurt him for what he is to those that hurt him for what he could be. She is not so clean now, she is dirty

unworthy—)

"Haruno-san."

Sasuke has stopped, and is looking at her with questions in his eyes, and with a start she realizes that she isn't moving anymore, that she is standing stock still in the middle of the quaint little road, eyes glassy and arms clutching invisible scars around her middle.

The sunlight filters softly down through the spring leaves and bird song lightly permeates the air.

She takes in a breath, deep and quiet, and smiles tremulously at Sasuke before softly shaking her head.

He nods, like he understands, dark eyes tinged with only the lightest slivers of polite concern.

Sakura prays that he never really will.

She walks the requisite number of steps until she is beside him, and this time, they walk side by side.

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><p>The house is large enough to house both generations of the Endo clan, made of sturdy pale bricks and bright enameled tiles. She can see a smaller, unfinished house farther inside the property and Sasuke explains that it is for when the oldest son of the clan married.<p>

She is still nodding along to his brief explanation when Amaya runs out of the house and flings herself into Sasuke's arms. Sasuke allows her only as much time to cling to him as to reorient herself in space, and then he is setting her gently but firmly back on the ground, and Sakura understands because he is and always will be a man who valued his personal space.

Sakura can see the other woman's eyes flash hurtful for just a moment, and she just knows, _knows _that Endo Amaya is as in love with Sasuke as she herself had been all those years ago, twelve and clueless in all the ways that mattered the most.

She wants to say something, tell this girl with burnt umber eyes to save herself from the heartache. But what did she know? The Sasuke here is not the Sasuke she'd known. This Sasuke would not spit cruel words if Amaya ever were to confess her feelings (perhaps she already had). This Sasuke might even consider it.

This Sasuke is not hers.

So she smiles brightly when Amaya asks _Kun-chan_ if he'd brought her anything from the village and laughs when Sasuke says something light and teasing (_teasing, he can tease now without malice or ill intent_) in return.

And when the rest of the family start coming out of the door and Sasuke shifts so that he is standing protectively at the forefront of the small group of people, reflexively shielding Amaya's body with his, Sakura bows in introduction and cannot pretend that it doesn't hurt anymore.

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><p>They are nice people, she decides. They invite her in without reservation and look at her Konoha headband with curiosity. Apparently they don't get too many ninja around these parts, isolated as they are in the valley between two large mountains. They do not know where Konoha is, and the name of the long disbanded Akatsuki means nothing to them. Sakura wonders at the luck Sasuke had in being discovered by these people, who'd been on a trading trip that'd taken them uncharacteristically far from home.<p>

Had anyone else found him, Sakura thinks, he would probably have been recognized and killed.

They ask her to stay for dinner first and to talk to Sasuke after, and against her better judgment she accepts.

That is how she finds herself sitting in front of a heaping serving of dumplings and soup. The food is delicious but she doesn't eat anymore after the first few bites. Instead, she is paying rapt attention to the way Sasuke interacts with those around him. The ease and familiarity is subtle, because even if he wasn't wounded bleeding fucked up on the inside Sasuke is still fundamentally Sasuke—reserved with his affections.

They interact—they interact like a family. The smiles are easy and the banter is light. The mother asks her a few polite inquiries, where she is from ("Konoha."), how well she knew Sasuke ("Not very."), if that was her natural hair color ("Sadly, yes."). Other than that they leave her alone.

Sakura can feel the gap though, this difference of worlds between them. These people know nothing of war and dying and the heartache of watching your home crumble in flames behind you. They do not worry about politics and poison and protecting their leader with steel and blood and life. Instead they talk about trade agreements with other civilian villages and cities and if the crops would pull through this year. Things that Sakura knew absolutely nothing of.

She sits still and quiet in the corner and returns to picking at her food. All of a sudden her hitai-ate feels too tight around her head.

Sakura feels the pressure of someone's stare and looks up to find Sasuke's dark eyes trained on her. The connection lasts for just another fraction of a second, and then he is looking away again, drawn back into soft conversation.

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><p>She asks that they take a walk. Alone.<p>

The look Ayama sends her is withering.

Sakura doesn't bat an eye, and Sasuke must have seen something in her face (he'd always been perceptive, and memories whisper of a single compliment from a chunin exam long ago) because he agrees, excusing himself and promising to help with the dishes after they return. Endo Mayuri, as Sakura learns that the name of the mother is, merely waves him off.

Call her petty, call her jealous and selfish and just the tiniest bit over-possessive, but Sakura refuses to begin the healing, to begin to give him back any pieces of himself within those four walls. They are not in Konoha, but that does not mean she will just give _this_ Sasuke to them too.

She would make sure that this Sasuke, who will be not quite Uchiha and not quite _Kun-chan_, has the ability to _choose_.

(And she knows what he will pick, because she will twist the truth and manipulate her words, make it seem like there isn't much for him to go back to except reminders of pain—easy pain, some kind of laughable tragedy that will always pale in comparison to the truth— and people that do not mind his absence. She will give him only what he can carry with him: the bare bones of his history. The bare bones of what could've really happened.)

It is uncharacteristically quiet as they walked slowly around the perimeter of the grounds. Behind the house, she can see the fields stretching far into the distance, the blue-grey of dusk reflecting pale shadows against the muddy waters of the rice paddies.

Nothing moves. There is no wind, no breeze despite the country's namesake. He walks, steps familiar enough to lend her the resolve she needs.

"Your name," Sakura breathes, "is Uchiha Sasuke."

**tbc**

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><p><strong>an:** Paige, YOU HAVE BIRTHED A MONSTER. /shot

Um, yeah, I said it'd be quick! I hope it isn't too confusing though, everything made sense in my head but by the third time I read it over on paper...

Well, the basic gist of it is that Sakura _will _tell Sasuke who he is, as so far as where he was from, what he did for a living, how he "died", etc, because she knows that otherwise not knowing his past would eat at him until he went back to Fire Country to find out himself (where he'll promptly get shot and killed because last anyone's seen him, he was crazy and wearing an Akatsuki cloak). BUT, she'll only tell him enough (and make up the rest) to let him rest in peace. I usually don't like to explain things fully in author notes, but I thought this chapter might really need it, aha. But YES, I can't believe the positive responses I got from the first chapter! I really, really hope this chapter (and all the chapters after) meet your expectations. Thank you so much for all your reviews and faves and alerts, and I'd love it if you'd drop a comment and/or some concrit when you finish reading. :)


	3. Part III

**a/n:** Why can't they just put the share links back on the bottom like before?

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><p><strong>Part III<strong>

Except she doesn't.

The syllables try to make it out of her mouth, they do, but at the very last second she chokes around _Uchiha_ and mangles _Sasuke_.

He sees her hesitance, she can tell, so Sakura clears her throat softly and tries again.

"Your name is Sasuke," the omitted _Uchiha_ hangs thick and heavy between them. Sakura wonders if he could feel it.

"…Sasuke," and it sounds like he is rolling the name around with his tongue, testing it, "what about my surname?"

And it's a split second decision, one that she's not sure she's ready to make, but her voice leaves her before she can catch herself, "You don't…really have one."

Sasuke stops walking then, "…my family. You mean I don't have a family?"

Sakura shakes her head, the lies coming easier now, "Many shinobi don't, outside of the few prominent nin clans. A lot of us become ninja after our families were lost in the wars."

His dark eyes widen, and Sakura can see a tinge of familiar panic tighten his face, "So my parents, they're dead? What about the rest of my family? I must've had _some_—_"_

(This was it. This was the crucial moment.)

Sakura takes a deep, discrete breath; one hand laid calmingly against his shoulder, and tries to ignore his warmth seeping through the gloves on her hand, "Sasuke, they're all gone."

He tenses at her words, his eyes wild, and her concern for him wars with the satisfaction at finally addressing him with his name

(_sasukesasukesasuke_sasuke_sasuke_sasuke_sasuke_sasuke_sasuke_______sasuke).

"There was a…raid when you were eight, and your parents were caught in the crossfire. You have no other relatives," her hand tightens on his shoulder, "But _Sasuke_, look at me. _Look at me_."

And he does, even if his eyes are a bit wild, a bit dumbfounded—and she never thought she'd see that expression cross his face—he looks at her, really focuses, and for the first time since they met there is more to his gaze than just the polite distance of strangers.

Sakura feels her something in her stomach trill.

"You _do_ have a family, the Endo, they found you, took you in, and made you theirs. _They're_ your family now Sasuke."

His shoulder is still tense and his eyes still blaze a bit too brightly for her tastes (she prays that it is not the red of the sharingan that she can glimpse behind black depths), but he nods nonetheless.

Sakura tries one more time, voice emphatic, "Don't go chasing ghosts Sas—_Kun-san_, don't abandon the people you love for something you can't remember having."

Maybe this time, he will listen to her.

But Sasuke says nothing, and soon her hand slips noiselessly from his shoulder. The sun has fully set by now and it's only by the dim glow of the lanterns scattered along the path that she can make out his features.

She waits.

"Aa…" the syllables creak in dark.

Sakura stands perfectly still, barely breathing.

"…tell me…tell me more."

Her lungs start to function again, and she smiles into the night.

* * *

><p>"It doesn't sound like the most riveting existence in the world."<p>

Sakura smiles at the wry humor in his voice and shrugs, even though she knows he can't see her. They have been talking for an hour now, and their walk has taken them deep into the rice fields. In the summer, the paddies would've been alive with the buzz of mosquitoes, but for now all is quiet.

"Are you disappointed?"

"It's a bit unsettling to find out that somewhere, everyone thinks you're dead."

Sakura hums in agreement, before replying, "From what I can tell, you were a good shinobi. A loyal man. Going down in battle is nothing to be ashamed of, just be glad that Amaya found you when she did."

Not everything she told him had been lies. Just...some twists in the truth. She'd painted Konoha as a dreary place, more military than civilian, and shinobi as a not so desirable profession, reserved mostly as a last resort for the lost and desperate. It wasn't so far from what the rest of the civilian world thought of nin and the hidden villages. Sakura just wasn't correcting the misconceptions.

He hadn't been a people person back in the village, she told him, and what friends he had had all perished in the war. That wasn't so far-fetched; even now she could sense that he knew he hadn't been the most sociable person. He still wasn't.

She hopes he won't ask to visit graves that didn't exist.

Sakura had painted a solitary, dutiful Sasuke out of the ashes, someone who had ranked a respectable Chuunin, and led an ordinary day to day life. He'd been presumed dead, she explained, after his division was taken down during a skirmish in the recent war.

He lets her talk without interruptions, and she mentally pictures Sasuke digesting the new information, letting it settle in the blank slate that he'd labeled 'My Past'. Did he believe her? Was it enough?

"Well," Sakura says after a short pause, "You have a life here now. If you want, you could go back with me and see the Hokage in person yourself. It'll be a long trip though, and I'm perfectly fine with informing the right people that you're still alive and have them take you off the shinobi roster. That way you won't have to leave Amaya and the rest of your family during planting season."

The silence this time lasts longer.

"…do I really have a reason to go back?"

It startles Sakura, this Sasuke that looks to her for all the answers. She savors the odd mix of power and guilt coating her tongue for just a small moment, "I suppose there's no pressing reason."

She can almost see him nod in the night, "I could always visit later."

* * *

><p>"Do we have to call you Sasuke-kun now?" Amaya makes a face.<p>

After returning from their walk, Sasuke immediately got crowded by Amaya and her younger brother Akihiko, both clamoring to know of his past. Akihiko is ecstatic when he finds out that Sasuke used to be a shinobi and the latter had found himself inundated with requests to show the twelve year old boy "cool ninja stuff".

Sasuke had then dully pointed out that just because he used to be a ninja doesn't mean he remembered how to do any of the aforementioned "stuff". His voice had been dry, but Sakura didn't miss the consolatory pat the man bestowed on the boy's head.

Now, Sakura watches curiously as Amaya waits for Sasuke's answer. She'd called him _Sasuke _when they'd been walking, but that'd been borne out of pure selfish desire. She wonders what he'll say.

He releases a small puff of air, and Sakura recognizes it for what it is: a disguised sigh of exasperation.

"It makes no difference to me."

"Sasuke-kun…" Amaya wrinkles her nose as she tries it out—Sakura's chest constricts at the familiar suffix, finally attached to the right name, "No, I think I like Kun-chan better."

Sasuke shifts his shoulders in a shrug, and she can tell that he's tired, though the paper thin skin under his eyes is only faintly bruised. He's still mulling things over, she knows, nothing's had a chance to settle yet.

She wonders what she'll do if he changes his mind and demands to be taken back to Konoha. Unease flickers through her for a second, but Sakura determinedly blots the feeling out and clears her throat from where she is sitting on the couch in the living room. Sasuke is piled in an armchair opposite her with Amaya and Akihiko perched on either armrest. Endo Fuyu, the patriarch of the family, sits watching Sasuke and his children with a fond light in his eyes. Mayuri alone notices what Sakura has already spotted and calls to Amaya and Akihiko with a tired smile in her voice, "I think we should call it a night. Poor Kun-chan already has enough to think about without all your questions."

The siblings groan, but clamber off the chair all the same. Sasuke nods gratefully at Mayuri, stretching as he stood.

Sakura gets up as well, hoping the inn back in town was still open to visitors; Sasuke hadn't given her a chance to get a room earlier.

Fuyu, noticing her intention, immediately says, "No, no Sakura-san. Feel free to stay with us tonight. It is much too late to head back to the village and we have more than enough room."

Seeing no polite reason why she should refuse, Sakura agrees.

Fuyu's smile widens at her acceptance, "Kun, go escort Sakura-san to the guest room."

Sakura looks at Sasuke, startled and about to protest. But then he is gripping her arm lightly and leading her out the room and through the hallway, and she can't get past the light touch to voice any complaints.

"Your room is the last in the hallway, the bathroom is two doors down to on your left," they stop in front of the aforementioned door, "If you need anything, my room is right across from yours."

He lets go of her then, and Sakura finds that she can breathe a little easier.

Sasuke stays only long enough to acknowledge her soft thanks, slipping through his door before she can voice any of her concern.

Sakura sighs; he was still the same Sasuke at heart.

* * *

><p>The morning is new and crisp as Sakura stretches in the early sunlight. The house is silent behind her, and she savors the feel of the misty air sliding over her skin. Dawn is her favorite time of day, but back home hospital duty had left her with precious little time to savor them.<p>

Smiling into the sky, Sakura inhales deeply once, and starts her training with some simple kata to loosen her joints.

It doesn't take long and by the time she's finished the sun still hasn't fully risen. Hands on her hips and taking deep, heaving breaths, Sakura surveys the fields around her, eyebrows furrowed. Normally she practices chakra enhanced taijustu and ninjutsu next, which always inevitably results in a lot of decimated landscape.

She has a small feeling that the Endo clan won't appreciate the same being done to their land.

Well, she'd just have to make do without chakra then.

Grinning in anticipation now, with adrenaline coursing through her veins, Sakura begins, executing a series of right hooks and picking off imaginary enemies, aiming for invisible pressure points. She pictures Sasori in her mind, going through the battle again, body relying on muscle memory, dodging needles and spikes that exists only in her mind. Tumbling to the ground after a perfectly executed high-kick, she immediately follows through with a flawless uppercut. Her taijutsu has improved tremendously after hours spent training with Lee every day.

Panting now, gasping great gulps of air, Sakura chases after the imaginary Sasori for the killing blow, finds herself punching through a tree and remembering the feel of his wooden chest splintering underneath her fist, then encountering the warm, human heart.

No chakra had been used, but she leaves a three inch dent in solid bark nonetheless. Sakura, with her hands on her knees and sweat dripping from her skin, hopes that the Endo won't mind. She always began her training like this, reliving her best, most challenging fights, going through different scenarios, strategies, outcomes. After her first _real_ battle against the Akatsuki, she's been through many others, the consequences of living through a war. But Sasori had been her first, and the first to truly acknowledge her worth as an opponent. In her mind, it would always be her hardest battle, despite battling nin just as powerful and more since.

(She remembers them all; every single life she's taken, all the battles she's fought and the screams that lull her to sleep. It has been a long, long while since she's fought for the sake of fighting, and even longer since she's made the ground crumble under her opponent's feet in a cloud of dirt, dust, and debris. These days, it is always about colorless, discrete poisons slipped into a cup of tea and the light touch of her hand as she injects something lethal into the unsuspecting victim writhing in her arms.

These days, there is no glory in her victories.)

"Is this how you usually train?"

Sakura starts, whipping around to find Sasuke watching her from under the eaves of the house.

She wrinkles her nose, disconcerted that he could've snuck up on her, "Good morning Kun-san! I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

Sasuke shakes his head, walking over to where she stood panting, "I've always been an early riser."

She straightens, pushing her bangs away from her eyes with one hand and tugging down the loose t-shirt she'd trained in with the other. Looking up, she finds Sasuke examining the dent her fist had made in the tree.

He looks back to her, one eyebrow lifted, "Good job."

Sakura flicks hair out of her eyes and grins, wide and feral, "Sorry about your tree."

Sasuke snorts, and her smile widens; he could make even a snort sound elegant.

He repeats his question, and she hums an affirmative.

"Do all shinobi train in the same way?"

Sakura tilts her head, bemused, "Not really. Everyone has their own routine to follow, depending on what they want to work on. Usually I do more than just plain taijutsu—er, fist fighting. But using jutsu would've damaged your property."

"Aa…"

They stand in silence for several minutes, Sasuke seemingly deep in thought. Sakura rubs the back of her neck self consciously and squints at the sun through the tree branches, unsure of what to do next. Just as the quiet is about to turn from uncomfortable to awkward, Sasuke speaks again.

"Can you teach me?"

Sakura whips her head around to stare at him, incredulous, "Excuse me?"

"Teach me," he repeats, "Teach me how to fight like a ninja again."

She debates her next words, "I could, but I don't know how much I could teach you before I have to leave."

He nods, runs a hand through dark hair. It's not a nervous habit that she can remember, but then again she'd never seen the Sasuke she'd known in the past be nervous before.

"Just enough so that I can protect them."

Sakura almost has to look away from the newfound intensity in his eyes. The determination that she remembers is there, but it's different, because whereas before it'd been a cold, banked fire, now it was hot and alive, filled with something that was not hate.

Love.

Haruno Sakura is seeing love in Uchiha Sasuke's eyes.

She smiles again, then, and it is the widest one of all, lips curling and eyes bright, feverish with a happiness that she cannot explain.

Sasuke blinks in wake of its radiance, startled.

"Yes," she says, breathless, "I will teach you."

* * *

><p>Sasuke has to go help in the fields first though, so Sakura takes the time alone for her requisite check-in with Tsunade.<p>

The summoned slug pops into existence without fuss or dramatics. Sakura smiles at that; it's one of the reasons why she'd chosen this particular summon. Slugs aren't flashy like the toads or snakes are, they're quiet and do their job well with minimal grief incurred on the summoner's part. The sentimental in her also likes that it is _Tsunade's_ legacy that she is fully inheriting.

"Tell shishou that I'm fine and that no suspicious activity was encountered by the border. I'll start heading back soon; she can expect me home at the end of a week, tops."

The slug looks—or as much as a slug could have an expression anyways—at her reproachfully, "She'd probably like your location too, Sakura-chan."

"Tsunade-sama understands," she says in return, and leaves it at that.

The slug, Katsuna, twitches her feelers disapprovingly once, twice, and then disappears in a small puff of smoke.

Sakura shakes her head, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes and taking a listless glance at the room she'd gotten at the inn. Despite Fuyu's protests, she'd been insistent that she didn't intrude on any more of their hospitality, especially now that she'd be staying longer than originally expected.

The young woman smiles; despite herself, she's glad that she's going to get to stay for a few extra days.

Glad that she would get a few more days of Sasuke's company.

Still smiling, she gets up from the lumpy bed and moves to the bathroom to shower. In the few seconds before the door shuts and the water starts, faint, happy notes drift from the room.

Sakura hasn't sung in the shower since before the war.

* * *

><p>"Okay, pull back—yes, just like that—and follow through with a quick <em>snap<em>," Sakura watches Sasuke, guiding his movements with her voice and occasionally her hand. It is the next morning and they're doing basic taijutsu. She's already shown him all the basic forms and he is quick to learn. Even though he's forgotten, his body still remembers the movements and soon he is moving through even the more difficult kata with a familiar surety and grace.

"Good, now just repeat everything. Try to get enough of a feel for the different forms that you can move comfortably from one to the other. In a fight, your body's going to have to rely on muscle memory and instinct," she instructs from where she is sprawled against the trunk of a tree. It is just dawn, and the sunrise blankets them in a soft glow. The grass is still dewy against her skin.

Sasuke is practicing in the field just a little beyond, the sun dappling his body in soft pinks and light yellows. Sakura is happy watching him, now, in a time reserved just for the two of them as she hasn't been in years. Contented. Here, she could feel twelve again, when the burden of her world had only been getting Sasuke-kun to notice her and she could _always_ rely on her boys for protection.

Now she is the one teaching Sasuke how to protect his own.

(She lets herself forget that his own does not include her, not anymore.)

How far they've all come.

Sighing happily, she closes her eyes for just a moment, and lets the rising sun color the back of her eyelids with delicate shades of gold.

* * *

><p>Sakura wakes up to the soft sound of Sasuke's voice in her ears. She halfheartedly pushes away the hand that is tapping her shoulder and exhales contentedly; eyes still half mast as she stretches cramped muscles. Past her lashes, she can make out the vague shape of Sasuke kneeling before her, silhouette dark against rays of sunshine.<p>

Caught between the land of sleeping and waking, where her dreams are still so vivid that they're real, she reaches out a hand to softly brush Sasuke's cheek, letting slip a happy murmur of "_Sasuke-kun_".

Immediately, the boy—no, man, she realizes with a sinking feeling in her chest—stiffens, and Sakura snatches her hand away as if burned, memories coming back to her in a rush.

She sits up quickly, all traces of sleep gone from her eyes, back flush against the trunk of the tree.

"Ah, sorry Kun-san! I get kind of weird after I just wake up."

He looks at her strangely, brows furrowing as if struggling to decipher something, "You fell asleep on me."

Seeing that he would ignore her transgression, she grinns at the slight consternation in his voice.

"Sorry," she repeats lightly, "but it looked like you were doing fine without me anyways. Your body must've remembered the movements."

Sasuke nods and stands; a satisfied glint in his eye. Sakura braces herself to do the same, wincing at the pins-and-needles sensation coursing through her legs. She'd tucked them under her earlier and hadn't moved before she fell asleep.

A calloused hand appears in front of her face, and Sakura follows it to a strong arm and up, up, up to Sasuke's face. He arches one eyebrow when she continues to stare at his hand, dumbstruck. His casual touches, the ease with which he reached out, still catches her off guard.

Sighing, he bends lower and grasps her limp hand himself. The rough warmth startles her, and when he yanks her to her feet she stumbles, losing her balance in surprise. His hand is still large and solid in hers when she looks up to catch the brief flash of amusement on his face. He lets go of her after that, but the feel of his palm against hers lingers long after his soft farewell.

* * *

><p>Sakura watches over him for three long, glorious sunrises.<p>

She's taught him all of the basic taijutsu she knows and she's even started teaching him a more difficult move set. They stay away from chakra and ninjutsu.

Sakura soon discovers that even without chakra Sasuke could be blindingly fast. With his speed and impeccable reflexes, he is more than skilled enough to take any thugs that might cross his family's path.

When they train during the third day, Sakura smiles at him as she commends his progress and mentions that this meant she'd be leaving soon. She had promised Tsunade that she'd be back in a week after all, and that'd been three days ago.

The hospital needs her, she reminds herself silently, _Konoha_ needs her. But that doesn't stop Sakura from feeling pangs of regret at the thought of leaving Sasuke and this small sanctuary of time they'd found together every morning.

She could endure the lumpy mattress, the dingy inn, the cheap food, even the absence of her friends if it meant she could stay here with him forever…

(When it's just him and her in the bright early dawn, it is easy to pretend that they're together, friends and teammates, and that he remembers. It's very easy to start wanting more. There is no guilt under the colors of the sunrise. The sunlight bleaches everything the same pink and gold and blue.)

The sky above them has darkened to a cerulean identical to Naruto's eyes, and it pulls her back to reality.

"You are leaving?"

The consternation in his voice is veiled, but she can hear it, and it makes it just a bit harder to keep smiling.

"Of course, teaching you isn't my full time job you know," she makes a face, struggles to keep her voice teasing and light, "I don't even get _paid_."

The last word is uttered in a stage whisper, and she watches with something akin to pride swelling her chest as his expression relaxes itself in wry amusement.

"Anyways, get back to work Kun-san! You better improve fast if you want to prefect that technique before I leave."

* * *

><p>The next day, she doesn't seek out Sasuke during the dawn. Instead, she spends the time doing last minute packing and making sure she has enough supplies for the entire trip back.<p>

When she does set out for the Endo household, she looks for Amaya first, and in private thanks her for saving Sasuke. The younger girl is wary at first, suspicious of any ulterior motives. She still thinks the older woman means to steal her _Kun-chan_ away.

Sakura tries to assuage her fears with a small tip regarding tomatoes and sweets. Imparting these bits of Sasuke-trivia that she'd hoarded jealously when she was twelve doesn't give her the small sense of closure she expects, instead the moment the words leave her mouth she immediately wants to snatch them back out of the air.

Amaya must have sensed the change in her, and when Sakura leaves both girls feel troubled.

Next, she finds Fuyu and Mayuri, and her solemn thanks—first for saving Sasuke, and then for taking care of him all these years—earns her small, understanding smiles in response. She leaves them satisfied that Sasuke will be in good hands.

Sakura accidentally bumps into Akihiko outside, playing with some blunted kunai she'd given him before. This time, she gives him a newly sharpened set of shuriken and leaves him with a pat on the head and a strict warning that he couldn't use the weapons without asking Sasuke to teach him first. Akihiko's enthusiastic head bobbing tells her that she's in the good graces of one of the siblings, at least.

Sasuke though, is nowhere to be seen.

Sighing, Sakura hoists her pack higher on her shoulders, unable to delay leaving any longer. It wasn't like he didn't know she was leaving, she'd told him yesterday, and if he felt like saying goodbye, he would. Taking one last look at the main house and the rice paddies behind her, Sakura turns towards the path.

She walks alone for a good part of an hour, the dirt path taking her closer towards the village and the branch off that'd indicate she'd reached the main road. She could have easily traversed the distance if she ran, even without enhancing her speed with chakra. Instead Sakura takes her time, feet heavy against the dirt of the ground, enjoying the weight of the sunlight on her shoulders. There is still _Sasuke_ in the air, here, and she wants to savor it, soak up every stray particle of his that she can reach. If this sun-dappled road is the last memory of _Sasuke_ that she will make, Sakura will make sure that she remembers everything in blazing glory detail, even years down the road.

She pauses when she finally reaches the fork that would take her out of the valley proper and back on the rough trail home, and that is when—

He is silent as he steps out of the shadows, hands stuffed in his pocket and dark eyes slanting, head tilted in the sun for a moment, face effused in unearthly gold. Then he dips his head, and he is Sasuke again.

Sakura stops in front of him, and the silence hangs thick between them as she waits for him to speak.

(It is his turn now.)

"This isn't goodbye."

She blinks, "I'm sorry, but I have to leave Kun-san. My village needs—"

"You're going to come back again," he cuts her off.

Even more startled now, Sakura tries to make out his expression through dark bangs, his head bowed as he spoke,

"You're coming back. You still have a lot to teach me—to tell me."

He looks up then, and the conviction in his eyes is as strong as it'd been for revenge, the kind of deep, steady conviction that robbed the doubt from her breath and the disbelief from her heart.

His expression says that he is sure that she will be back; he will not have it otherwise.

A smile, the brightest she's ever given him, splits her face, makes her eyes burn greener than Konoha trees in the sun. Then Sakura nods and her answer rings clear in the air around them, "I will."

**tbc**

* * *

><p><strong>an:**

**kata -** Basically Japanese for form, used in English to mean certain moves and stuff in Karate (excuse the less than technical definition.)

Sorry for the late update guys, but I have finals this month and things are kind of hectic. And double sorry for not getting back to some of your reviews! I'll try keeping up with them again this chapter, but I _can_ promise you that I read and appreciate every single one.

Ok, so I sat down yesterday and basically wrote this straight from the afternoon to four something in the morning today, and then it took me a big chunk of time to do multiple revisions. I'm positive that there're probably still typos and run-ons and all sorts of nasty grammatical mistakes in there, but I'm just _too tired to read it again_. If I do, I'll probably delete everything in a fit of raaaage. On the plus side, this chapter's almost double the length of the last. 8D And the last half was just so much fun to write. I hope you guys enjoyed, and try to leave comments, critique etc in a review, yeah?

_The calm before the storm... ouo_


	4. Part IV

**a/n: **Hopefully the last ubbeta'd thing I ever write. :) Also a break from Sakura's POV, we get the boys this time around.

* * *

><p><strong>Part IV<strong>

Sometimes, he lets himself think "Haruno Sakura is lying". Always, the thought forms when his hands are occupied with some menial task or another. Always, he fights the words before they have a chance to fully exist.

He used to never know what to call himself in his head; Amaya had named him Kun because it was the first word he'd said when he woke up from his injuries. She'd been addressing the doctor one second and the next he was there, pressing hard against her throat with something akin to desperation in his eyes. A garbled name on his lips that'd ended in the only syllable that'd made sense: _kun_.

Amaya tells the story many times, always this way: and then the next second, she'd say, he'd already slumped, confused and disoriented, every memory gone.

When Sakura slipped and called him "_Sasuke-kun_" in that moment between sleeping and waking, there'd been an answering twinge in his gut. It wasn't the name itself, it was the way she'd said it: wistful, almost but not quite reverent. It'd felt _familiar_.

Haruno Sakura is lying, he thinks again, and this time it gets harder to banish the thought.

She'd given him no proof of his existence, of his _life_ before Amaya except for a few well reasoned words and the gut feeling that she would never lie. It was irrational how much he'd instinctively trusted her despite being strangers. Irrational, because every time he caught the pink and green of her in the periphery of his vision there was always the accompanying sense of expectation.

She'd visited two weeks ago. Two weeks since she'd smiled at him and promised that she'd return.

Sasuke (he supposes he should get used to referring to himself as such) tries to pretend he isn't waiting, but the pretense is always hardest to keep in the hours before dawn, as sweat slicks his skin and he pounds out the rough rhythms of the kata she'd taught him.

He strives to master the forms as quickly as possible, and he tells himself that it's for the sake of his own sense of pride, not because he hopes for an excuse for her to come back sooner, and stay longer next time.

* * *

><p>"Hello, Kun-san!"<p>

Sasuke nods in greeting, head dipping to hide the small, pleased smile that he hadn't been able to help. She grins at him knowingly, but doesn't mention it, instead starting on a tangent about the weather and the trip over and how nice it was this time of year.

He half-listens, paying more attention to the pleasing cadence of her voice than the words themselves.

Once again they'd met in town, except this time it'd been on purpose. She'd sent a message ahead via courier hawk with an approximate time and date, and he'd made a point to be in the village every day since. Neither acknowledges it, but they both enjoy the long walk in each other's company to the Endo estate.

Sasuke doesn't contribute much to the conversation. In fact, he doesn't say anything at all until they reach the end of the path. Then, and only then, does he turn to fully look at her. Sakura smiles up at him, and the noonday sun halos her hair and makes her eyes shine iridescent green. Familiarity punches him in the gut then, and his words catch in his throat.

A few beats of silence passes before he manages to get them out, "Sasuke. You can call me Sasuke now."

Her smile widens, and he feels inadvertently pleased with himself for having been the one responsible.

* * *

><p>This time Sakura plans to visit for a week. She refuses all offers of taking one of the numerous guest rooms in the house with a polite smile and insists on staying at the local inn. Every morning though, she manages to meet him to train, with the world dark around them and everyone still asleep. Sasuke's always been an early riser, and he prefers to train at the beginning of the day anyways, before he is too tired from chores and farm work. It occurs to him that she must get up earlier than he does, that it might inconvenience her. When he brings up the subject though, she merely waves it aside with an understanding shrug.<p>

So she continues to teach him, and he continues to learn. She has to actively participate to make things even remotely challenging for him anymore, and he likes this. He likes the rush of fighting a sentient opponent, glories in the way his hits are becoming harder, faster, more precise, savors the moments when they come so close only to miss each other by centimeters.

One morning Sasuke thanks her for correcting his stance in a spar. They are sitting in the shade of a tree, cooling down in the post-workout rush. Sakura looks surprised for a second, but recovers quickly and beams at him.

He thinks that teaching him, that being thanked by him must mean something to her. Sasuke is prideful—he senses that he's always been—but he is not vain. The little things are what give her away: her eyes glow darker after a murmured thank-you and she smiles just a tad wider every time he asks for help.

* * *

><p>You don't do things like that for a stranger, he realizes on the third morning, half-awake and having only just sat up in bed.<p>

You don't.

* * *

><p>"Tell me more about myself."<p>

Sakura looks up from her pressed herbs in surprise. They are unwinding after a hard spar, and this— the companionable silences and the occasional quiet exchange—has become routine. Sasuke is a man of habit, but it takes time for him to establish patterns. Amaya once told him it was because he had to rediscover the way he liked to do things all over again. Rediscover himself. So it should grate on his nerves that Sakura has wormed her way so easily into his established routine. But it doesn't and that is what paradoxically bothers him more. That it hadn't bothered him at all.

He repeats the question, softer this time. She looks off into the distance, brows furrowed in thought.

Sakura starts hesitantly, "I told you I don't know much. We didn't move in the same circles. I was a medic-nin and you were a combat chuunin."

"Hidden villages are not very big," he reminds her quietly, "you must have known a little more."

"Um…I think you had a fondness for tomatoes. You always brought tomato onigiri in your bento; it became sort of a joke after a while." Sakura's forehead is still wrinkled, and she isn't meeting his eyes. Instead she studies the herbs littered across her spread handkerchief.

He gives a noncommittal grunt. So his predilection towards the hard-to-obtain fruit hadn't been new. He files the information away but keeps his expression neutral.

She looks up then, and he can tell by the way she bites her lips that she has concluded that she must do better.

"You were…you were friends with a blond man. He was always very loud, and everyone thought it wouldn't work because you were such opposites, but you were great partners."

Sasuke quirks his lips then, "You make it sound like we were a couple."

She laughs, bright and sharp, "There _were _rumors going around! Did you know he was your first kiss?"

There is more laughter at the horrified expression on his face, "Relax! You guys were in the same class at the academy and there was a, uh, little accident. Someone pushed someone else and _boom_, lip to lip."

The disdain doesn't leave his face. She is grinning wickedly now, pink hair disheveled and spiked by sweat. Some part of him deep down feels like there is something wrong with this picture: her smile is too bold, her hair too short. Maybe not wrong, he amends, just _different_. But he doesn't know what she is _supposed_ to look like, doesn't know where these expectations are coming from. He thinks that maybe if he can just find that place inside himself where he's getting all these impulses, he will find his past.

Sakura is still talking about a fan club and scary girls that won't quit, with something akin to nostalgia.

You don't reminisce about strangers, Sasuke thinks, and is startled to realize that it is another epiphany. Or it would've been, if he wasn't fighting words that he still won't let himself say (Haruno Sakura is lying, it's as simple as that, asshole. Get it through your thick skull—no, _no._).

His next words are a quiet interruption in her cheerful babble, "You seem to have known me much better than you previously let on."

Her smile collapses, and her face is completely blank for just a moment. He relishes having been the one to break her carefully constructed composure. This woman has so much power over him; she holds all these intangible, unverifiable details of who he used to be in her palms. It is irrational of him to have so much faith in one person, and a cynical, detached part of himself that he does his best to avoid keeps reminding him of the word betrayal in a voice that he only half-recognizes as his own.

But he has weighed the pros and cons, and her surprise at seeing him on that very first day had definitely been genuine.

She carefully schools her expression into one of indifferent confusion. He isn't sure how those particulars could coexist, but she pulls it off flawlessly. The transformation is too quick to not be practiced, he can tell.

(After all, isn't he the one who keeps masks of apathy on hand like aces hidden up in sleeves?)

"I knew you only as well as the next person," and her voice suddenly sounds so tired. There is truth in those words that he hadn't felt previously, so he accepts her answer even as that same part of him from before wants to demand an explanation.

Which is a ridiculous notion anyways because how do you demand anything of the truth?

So he ignores that bit of himself, yet again, and is content to just lean back on braced elbows and watch as the sky lightens above them. Sakura doesn't say anything more, and when he turns his head a fraction to look at her, he finds her staring into the distance, green eyes thoughtful.

It's an expression that he's come to associate with her: forehead wrinkled, teeth worrying her lower lip, eyes turned inwards to something no one else can see.

Then there is a flash-second picture in his mind, one of the same set of eyes; younger, happier, but no less green and then a pair of lips pink and imperfectly glossed wrapped around the syllables of his name.

He blinks and it's gone.

"Sasuke-san?" He is startled by her voice and all of a sudden weary. Sasuke takes a moment to study her face, note the slightly chapped lips and the faint dark smudges under her eyes.

"Sasuke," she says again, and does not flinch under his scrutiny like he expects.

* * *

><p>She is his first memory, and he does not know what to do with that knowledge. He can't confront her, because she will batter him down with politeness and distance and an impersonal sort of logic that he understands so, so well.<p>

It feels like a reversal of roles, even if he has no idea why, and Sasuke does not like it at all.

* * *

><p>"I have to leave tomorrow," she tells him apologetically in the middle of redirecting a roundhouse kick on the fifth morning.<p>

Sasuke stumbles, surprised, and barely manages to dodge the blow.

Sakura doesn't even pause and offers no explanation as their spar goes on. Sweat is streaming down his skin by the time they're finished, and she lobs a water bottle at him with a grin and a quick thumbs-up.

"You actually made me work this time around. Good job." He takes the light ribbing in stride, and thanks her for the water. He is about to broach the topic of her earlier statement when she starts, "Tsunade-sama needs me back earlier than expected. I'm sorry Sasuke-san, something urgent came up."

Nodding, Sasuke takes a seat under their customary tree. From the corner of his eye, he can see Sakura frowning at his silence. Sasuke is normally a reserved person, but over the last few days he's been even quieter than usual. Amaya had asked him repeatedly what his problem was before flouncing off with a miffed look and the pronouncement that he was having another one of his "tantrums".

Sakura had been there at the time, and she'd only smiled knowingly to herself. Like there was a private joke that none of them (that he _should_ be) were getting.

And that, Sasuke thinks, is the crux of his problem. He doesn't know how to center himself around this new piece of memory that's been given back to him, doesn't know if he can trust it or if it's finally a legitimate piece of his past. He feels like he should be _changed_ somehow, now that he has this new shred of himself. Sasuke's imagined regaining his memories before, and it always goes somewhat like this: after the first bright flash of recognition the rest will come, images and sounds and every single part of _the boy who was_ tumbling into his head one right after the other, falling into neatly labeled boxes piece by piece until suddenly he _knows_ who he was and who he is and the two will merge together seamlessly.

Sasuke hadn't known it would instead be like one single, frustrating moment of sobriety after a long and hazy night of indulgence.

Sakura is still looking at him strangely when he finally comes back to himself. She hasn't moved, fingers idly twirling a piece of grass but otherwise intent on him, patient. He gets the feeling that she's someone used to waiting.

"I understand," he says, and it's the biggest lie he's ever remembered telling.

* * *

><p>Sasuke isn't even sure if that pair of eyes had been hers.<p>

Somewhere inside of him though, he knows he'll never be able to find that exact shade of green again.

* * *

><p>When Sakura leaves this time, he is there for her to say goodbye to like everyone else. There is no need for privacy so he can ask her to stay. They both already know that she'll be back.<p>

After she's gone, Amaya finds him late one night cleaning up in the kitchen.

"You're different now," she says. Sasuke looks at her, at this girl who he's promised to protect and look after along with her family for as long as they'll have him.

She is so still, and he knows how much of an effort that must take her. Her brown hair curls in the heat of early summer, and her eyes are narrowed, searching. She knows him as well as anyone reasonably can, is the one who sticks closest to him in his adoptive family.

Sasuke shrugs, like he doesn't know what she means. He doesn't want to talk about this, not now, maybe not ever.

"It's because of her, isn't it? She comes in like, like she _owns_ you because she _sort of _knew you from before—"

He freezes, eyes flashing, the slow burn of irritation making them itch. He rubs at them absentmindedly, mouth poised for rebuttal, but Amaya leaves no room for his words.

"—but that doesn't matter, because it's been five years and you're someone else now, Kun-chan. You're _ours_."

Something rears up inside of Sasuke at her words; he does not like the concept of belonging to someone based on who found him first, like a _pet_ or, or. And that is all ridiculous because Amaya hadn't even meant it in that sense, because deep down inside he _knows_ it's better to have a place, to have _people_ to come back to than to have nowhere (and no one) to call home at all.

Besides, he's being a hypocrite anyways because how many times has he called the Endo _his_? To protect, to be indebted to, to love?

The sudden surge of anger quiets down to a simmer, and when he answers her, his voice is calm. "I'm not property," Sasuke explains patiently, "I don't belong to anyone."

Amaya looks taken aback, almost hurt. Her brown eyes widen and she takes a breath. Maybe to apologize, he thinks, but probably not. He heads her off before she can begin again, "That doesn't mean that I can't belong _somewhere_ though. I'm grateful to your family, Ama. I won't ever forget what you have done for me."

The last part of his sentence is directed to her and her only, and Sasuke knows she will appreciate that.

The girl doesn't look placated though; her hands are clenched, her expression still wary. He notes the contours of her determined face, the soft slope of her shoulders, and can't help but compare her to another girl. Someone just a little older and harder.

"You've remembered something, haven't you, Kun-chan?"

Sasuke doesn't answer, instead turning to face away from her. His shoulders are hunched, curving inward over the kitchen, sudsy hands clutching at the countertop.

He wants to make her stop, because how can he talk to anyone rationally about his newly acquired scrap of memory when he hasn't even acknowledged it himself?

He can't though; he's never been able to stop Amaya from speaking when she wants to. She'll go on pushing and pulling and picking at his scabs with her words until he inevitably forces himself to leave, to push past her so he won't lose his temper and say something he'll regret in the morning.

Amaya's still talking when he turns, mouth midway through launching more accusations: whole sentences and phrases devoted to driving home guilt and love at the same time. Sasuke can't hear her though, not really; everything she says sounds like the long, relentless drone of bees. There is nothing else in his head but the overwhelming need to escape. In here, he feels trapped by the weight of not only what Amaya expects from him but what he expects from himself.

Expectations. It's a word he's been thinking of a lot lately.

Sasuke imagines the younger girl's indignant expression as he passes her, out through the kitchen and down the long corridor before finally the door that would take him outside. To working lungs and enough space to lose track of his own.

She will follow him, he knows, and the thought propels him to keep moving, to jog down the path and away from the house, the lights turning hazy and distant behind him as he gathers speed. Sasuke likes the rush of air racing over his skin, likes the feel of the burn in his muscles. Most of all though, Sasuke relishes the way running, that moving, leaves him no room to think.

* * *

><p>When Sakura comes back from her little "vacation" this time, Naruto is there to meet her at the gates. He can see her moving towards the guards, all mussed hair and languid grace. She walks slowly, leisurely, like he hasn't seen in years. It had been a cloudy day, but when the sun finally peeks out from behind a cloud she looks up, and the way she tips her head towards the warmth makes heat pool lazily in his gut in its own customary fashion.<p>

Naruto swallows. He loves Sakura-chan, all the time, but sometimes he can't help but fall into old habits and love her the _wrong way_. He is clear on where her boundaries lie, knows that she's erected new barriers in the time since the war; that she's grown up more than a little and has changed. But then again, they all have.

"Sakura-chan!" He calls out, voice happy the way he automatically is around her.

She smiles up at him, and the familiar affection he can see curled in the corners of her lips makes his own grin widen. With a light leap he jumps from the top of the gate and lands in front of her, and neither of them knows who initiates the hug.

"Had fun?" He asks her when they part.

The girl nods, shifting the bags on her back before saying, "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

"Did you bring me any souvenirs?" Naruto wheedles, hands laced behind his head as the duo walks back into the village.

Sakura laughs, rolls her eyes, hands already reaching over her shoulder for something in her pack, "I have some leftover instant ramen that you can have."

Naruto pouts in response, but takes the proffered bags nonetheless. Once, he'd teased her about bringing the stuff with her every time she went on missions, even if she never ate it. He remembers saying something along the lines of being a good influence for her, and she'd only shrugged, punching him good-naturedly in the shoulder and muttering something about _if anyone needs a good influence, it'd be you, doofus_. But there's no venom in her insults, hadn't been for a long time now. It's their own brand of banter, comfortable and well worn. Naruto can't imagine his life without it.

"Next time, Sakura-chan, we should go on a vacation together! Maybe some of those famous hot springs in Lightning, eh?" He elbows her lightly, grin lecherous, and Sakura is so used to their well versed back and forth that she doesn't even threaten him anymore. Instead there's only a roll of her eyes heavenward and a quick pinch to his arm.

"Sa-ku-ra-chaaaaan," he whines her name, knowing what comes next, feigning hurt. They're comfortable, Naruto thinks again. He likes adventure and surprises but it's nice to always have a constant in life. Sakura's that constant; his best friend, his anchor.

He suddenly smiles at the sappy sentiment, and Sakura looks at him oddly.

"Nothing," he says in way of response. She quirks an eyebrow but doesn't push. By this time they've reached her apartment, and he waits while she goes inside to drop off her gear before setting off for the Hokage Tower to see Tsunade.

It's the same routine they've kept to for years every time one of them was in the village after the other has been away for any amount of time. This is nice, Naruto vaguely thinks again. It is nice and he relishes her company and if Sakura moves a little differently than she used to, if her steps are more determined and lighter all at once, he doesn't comment on it and pretends not to notice.

* * *

><p>Ino once off-handedly said that <em>it's strange, the two of you are so different now, but you guys are still so stagnant. Your friendship's like some twisted shrine to Sasuke.<em>

He'd acted offended at the mention of Uchiha, had played dumb as to what stagnant meant. He hadn't know the official definition of the word, but if nothing else Naruto was _intuitive_, and he'd felt _stagnant_ deep in his bones.

The bluffing and bluster only gets him so far, and that's something else that's stayed the same.

* * *

><p>Sakura reports that her vacation had been uneventful and the borders still secure. Tsunade in turn hands the two of them mission scrolls and tells them they need to leave again by tonight. Naruto is thrilled, excited to work with his best friend again, but one look at Sakura and he can tell the girl is distracted. One hand twists itself in the fabric of her skirt, and her expression is thoughtful when she asks how long this particular mission will take. There's something anxious in the way her eyebrows scrunch and it reminds him of fidgeting in classes during his academy days, when the classroom was stifling hot and all he wanted to do was get <em>out out out<em>. There's anticipation and impatience mixed in there somewhere, and Naruto's face falls.

Tsunade notices as well, arching elegant eyebrows and leaning forward just a bit. She's toeing the line between Hokage and shinobi, teacher and pupil, but Naruto understands: where Sakura's concerned it's always too easy to care just a bit too much.

"Is something wrong? You're always asking for missions together with your fool of a teammate."

The pink haired girl shakes her head once and then again for emphasis, "No, shishou! I've just been a bit preoccupied lately, that's all. Sorry, Naruto."

She _sounds_ sincere, but he can tell from the way her fingers are still absentmindedly tapping the scroll against her leg that Sakura's still not all here.

Maybe she's tired of being "stagnant" too.

The thought makes Naruto's stomach clench, and it takes every ounce of control he has to keep the smile plastered on his face.

* * *

><p>"Are you sure everything's ok, Sakura-chan?" He'd promised himself that he wouldn't pry, but Naruto has to ask again anyways, this time just between the two of them. She might be more honest if that was the case, he thinks; she would never lie to him, he hopes.<p>

Sakura looks up from the flickering fire between them, the light of the flames lending tragedy to the angles of her face, making her beautiful instead of merely pretty all at once. She contemplates him from beneath her lashes, hands binding her knees to her chest. Naruto blushes under her scrutiny and wonders why, after all this time, she still has the same effect on him.

"I am. Really, Naruto." Her reply is uncharacteristically succinct, and maybe satisfactory for others because of the way she can lace sincerity and truth behind words that she doesn't mean at all, but the blond is far from satisfied.

His eyes slide close and he flops back on top of his sleeping bag, nostalgia bubbling up inside of him for the way she used to tell him everything—her hopes and fears and dreams and all the whys and hows behind everything she says and does.

Naruto misses that.

"I'll take first watch, then," her amused voice comes from somewhere above him and he smiles, listening to the soft sounds of her body as she stands. In his mind's eye he can picture her lean body unfolding, the alert look on her face as she moves to stand guard. Yes, she's changed, probably _still_ changing. And maybe _they're _changing too, but there will always be something comforting about the two's implicit trust in each other.

_I've got your back_.

* * *

><p><em>Her chakra's different<em>, it's an off-hand comment Naruto makes to himself during the mission, mid-battle. _Like she took a dip somewhere and forgot to dry off, or—_and he loses the train of thought in order to concentrate fully on dodging the next blow, rasengan already forming in hand. He doesn't think of it again.

* * *

><p>She goes back even sooner this time, right after her mission ends in fact. Sasuke is disarmed by the simple pleasure he takes in seeing her face again, in the way the slim white column of her throat arches in the sunlight as she looks up at him and smiles, a quiet <em>hello<em> already on her lips. He tells himself that he should be more apprehensive, wary, but his brain does not obey.

He'd missed her, Sasuke realizes. It's not even because her arrival brings with her the tantalizing prospect of more pieces of the puzzle that he calls his past. It's just…_her_.

He doesn't say any of this out loud. Instead, he watches as she reads it from his body language, from the slight curve of his lips and the arch of his eyebrows.

She touches his hand as she walks past him to start on the path towards home. It's only a slight brush of her fingers against the back of his hand, but it startles Sasuke, makes him really _notice_. They've touched before, sometimes pressed hip to sweaty hip, but this is different, because all the times previous had been utilitarian, necessary to correcting his stance or teaching him a new form. This time, she hadn't _had_ to have walked quite so close to him. In fact, those particular set of steps she took was only one option in a million different ways the scenario could have played out. She could have walked around him, ran around him, even flew right over his head in the treetops on chakra and things he's only beginning to half-understand if she so wishes.

Instead she'd passed so close that her hand brushed his, _so _that her hand could brush his.

Sasuke is uncomfortable afterwards, but only because of the emotions the simple contact had elicited.

* * *

><p>That night, he dreams of a different touch. There is a pair of hands clutching his, and he is squeezing, squeezing until he can feel the delicate bones creak and bend. Pain is exploding in his shoulder, burning a blazing path from the back of his neck. All he is aware of besides the agony are those hands that are the only things anchoring him to the fact that there is something beyond this fire that is eating him alive.<p>

Faintly, he can feel the feather light touch of hair sliding across his cheek as whoever is holding him presses her (_it's a girl, he realizes_) face against his neck, murmuring his name like a mantra to keep the hurt away.

_Sasuke-kun Sasuke-kun Sasuke-kun, _he hears, and when his eyes slit open for a split second he can catch strands of pink in the periphery of his vision.

* * *

><p>He has to ask, Sasuke thinks. But they keep on training in the mornings and sometimes she stays long enough for tea. When he wakes up, it is inevitably to phantom pain in his neck, and his hair is always slick with sweat from his nightmares.<p>

The memory nags at him, because he doubts there are very many people in this world with pink hair and fewer still that he would have known.

Sasuke wants to shake her every time she gets that look on her face, like she's remembering something from a long way off. _Stop lying_, he wants to yell, _stop lying and tell me who you really are_.

His eyes itch all the time now, and he finds himself getting impatient, snapping at Amaya when she talks too long or too loud and being curt with Akihiko. He knows he's been less than pleasant to be around lately and even though every worried look he gets from Mayuri makes him feel guilty as hell, Sasuke can do nothing to stop it.

_Maybe you should take a break from all the shinobi stuff_, Fuyu had suggested.

_Maybe_, Sasuke had agreed. He knew he wouldn't.

And through it all, Sakura was there every day, infuriating and exhilarating all at once. Their spars are the only opportunities now that he has to take out his frustration and release a bit of his tension.

One day, she remarks on the knots in his shoulders and offers him a massage.

_I'm a trained medic, Sasuke-san. I think I know what I'm doing_, she says off-handedly, like her hands on him were no big deal. Of course it _shouldn't _be. They are tentative friends now and friends can do things like offer to work out the kinks in each other's shoulders, but in response Sasuke only snaps at her, voice caustic and cutting to the core. Silence follows, and one look at her face sends remorse coursing through his system, and he makes quick work of a _sorry _immediately afterwards.

_It's ok, Sasuke-san_, she replies lightly.

And _that_, Sasuke yells in his head, _that_ is the problem, her _Sasuke-san's_ and carefully drawn distance and _shit_—

* * *

><p>"Sasuke-kun. Call me Sasuke-<em>kun<em>," he finally tells her one morning, because if he had to hear_ Sasuke-san_ in her voice _one more time_…The wealth of emotions flashing across her face makes him reconsider.

Surprise, anger, _panic_ flits across her face before it's blank once again. He sees her heart in her expressions and it finally feels right. He should always have been able to read her like an open book.

It feels familiar.

"I'm sorry, I don't think that'd be appropriate," Sakura finally answers in a polite, calm voice with none of her usual playful bite.

"Bullshit," Sasuke spits, and is surprised by his own vulgarity.

She stops, tilting her head and considering him with pursed lips and narrowed eyes, before wordlessly picking up her training gear from the ground and leaving. This time, she dispenses with the formalities of even pretending to be a civilian, hands moving together in a few quick seals before she's gone, the only evidence she was ever there the cherry blossom petals now littered in the grass. Sasuke counts ten.

His back still aches from where she'd kicked him during the spar.

* * *

><p>It isn't until much, much later that Sasuke finally gets it.<p>

She'd _fled_.

* * *

><p>Sakura nearly hurtles into Naruto with breakneck speed when they cross paths in the forest outside of Konoha. He'd been out on a routine patrol when he'd felt the flares of her familiar signature. He barely manages to dodge the pink and red bullet before spinning around on the balls of his feet and stopping her with two firm hands around her shoulders.<p>

"_Woah_, hey there Sakura-chan. Where's the fire?"

She whips her head to look up at him, and the blond is immediately alarmed. Her eyes are hard, not red rimmed but still glassy with unshed tears. Her chakra is spiking in her distress, and he frowns, the taint that he'd noticed before stronger than ever.

Sakura shakes her head emphatically and shoves his hands away, barely pausing before taking off again.

Naruto grimaces, torn between concern and the knowledge that she wouldn't want him to follow; at the very least he can keep tabs on her, make sure she gets back to her place ok, maybe even find out what's wrong with her chakra.

He concentrates on slipping into his Sage mode.

* * *

><p>Chakra, even suppressed, leaves traces of itself on everything it touches. It's poetic in a way, that no matter how hard people try to conceal and repress and wipe themselves from the earth they will always inadvertently leave a mark behind. These pseudo-signatures are impossible to track for ordinary shinobi, but if you were particularly in-tune to your surroundings…If, say, you were one of the legendary Toad Sages of Mount Myoboku or one of their famed students…<p>

* * *

><p>Naruto's eyes widen the moment he recognizes the chakra—<p>

**tbc**

* * *

><p><strong>an: **Lots of apologies, yes?

1) Sorry this took so long!  
>2) Sorry if I didn't get back to your review (but each and every one's been read and appreciated, of course!).<br>3) Sorry if you've asked me questions in an anon review and I didn't answer. I can't unless you provide me an email address to respond to. D:  
>4) Sorry if this is too longtoo clunky/too OOC/too...typo'd. I've read through and edited it again since this morning when I first posted, so if you find any more typos or grammatical errors (thank you to everyone who points those out, you guys have been a big help) then feel free to blame that on me and not sleep deprivation.

Also, about the length! Ummm, I really wanted to wrap this up with a nice number of chapters (five being the ideal), but it looks like there'll at least be two more, or one veeeery long last chapter and an epilogue. The only reason part four reached the mammoth length it did though was because I wanted to contain the guy's POV in _one_ chapter, otherwise I could've cut it off with some Sasuke introspective.

I hope this didn't disappoint! And thank you for your feedback and concrit as always (over a hundred reviews in three chapters? You guys overwhelm me. :D )!


	5. Part V

**a/n:** Lots of love to cutecrazyice for giving this a once-over even though she's been going on thirtysix-plus hours of no sleep!

* * *

><p>And afterwards when she is standing all alone in the pool of sunshine, in the silence, she remembers and thinks: this, <em>this<em> is how it all fell apart.

**Part V**

Sakura runs like his words can chase her, like_ he_ is chasing her. Once-upon-a-time she might not have minded that their roles are reversed, for once, but now she'd like nothing better than to be obsolete in his eyes.

(No, that's a lie. She's not as selfless as she likes to think.)

Her heart is pounding, and Sakura can feel the reverberations all the way in the back of her throat; a hard rhythm that pushes her to go faster. _Survival_, it thrums under her skin, _self preservation._

The thought briefly crosses her mind that if she is running this hard, this fast, then she isn't as bloodless in all of this as she'd like to think. That maybe she's made the wrong choice where Sasuke is concerned.

She should have known—she _always_ makes the wrong choice with Sasuke.

Her feet finally stop, and when she looks up Sakura is surprised to find herself at the door of her old house. The windows are dark and the shadows are unmoving. A for-sale sign is taped to the front door.

She'd had to leave the house after her parents died in the beginning of the war. Sakura had always planned on buying it back, but the fighting, the deaths and the dying, and after they'd won, the rebuilding, took up all her attention. When she finally had enough saved up from missions, it'd felt like it was too late.

A lot of things are like that, now.

The road is quiet, save for the soft buzzing of cicadas. Sakura stares up at her old home, finding the bare window of what used to be her bedroom. She imagines lace curtains flanking the empty panes of glass, the ghost of her younger self propped on the windowsill, mourning teammates who had left her far behind. She listens to the breath rattling inside her lungs and begins to count to thirty. By the time she reaches nineteen, Sakura is calm.

She can-she _will_ salvage this, this _thing_ that she has, she _has to has to has to_—

* * *

><p>He slams into Tsunade's office in a rage, in disbelief and fearful hope and—<p>

"Oi brat, you can't just barge in here like—" the older woman catches sight of Naruto's expression and abruptly stops.

"Report," Tsunade snaps, because that look of wild desperation has never bode well for Konoha.

Naruto doesn't speak, and it's only then that the Hokage notices the markings and glowing gold irises of his eyes. The room is nearly thrumming with the power of his chakra, and the windowpanes vibrate at her back.

"Sa-Sakura-chan, do you know where she's been going for vacation?"

"Somewhere in Wind Country, but I trust my apprentice enough not to demand a specific location from her. This is relevant how?"

Naruto starts to shake his head, but halfway through he stops and nods hard instead, "I'd like to request to go on leave. Immediately."

Tsunade frowns, a slow swallow against the thick tension of the small space, "You're not the sixth Hokage yet. You can't just go running off whenever. Speaking of which, aren't you still supposed to be on patrol?"

"I _need to go_," Naruto nearly growls, and she sees the first hints of red behind the gold of his eyes.

Tsunade hides the shaking of her hands behind her back, and her voice is only annoyed when she agrees, free of any tremors, "Fine, go. I'll just deal with all the extra paperwork by myself."

Naruto's gone before she gets two words out, and in his absence, Tsunade finally breathes.

* * *

><p>He doesn't bother looking for Sakura. He probably should've, at the very least to demand an explanation, but Naruto isn't thinking. The present is falling away from him, and all he knows is the red and black haze of that final battle, of the frenzied chirping of birds and his best friend, his brother, the one who he'd failed to save falling falling <em>falling<em>.

The bottom of the cliff had been obscured in fog, and there was no echo for when the body hit the ground.

(_It wasn't a cliff, _Sakura had said, _and there was no_ final battle_. We weren't there, and someone else watched him bleed. We weren't there, and some nameless, faceless, nobody rolled Uchiha Sasuke into a ditch to die._)

Naruto runs back the way he came, following the fading thread of chakra Sakura left behind. He runs and runs and runs and doesn't think at all, because Sasuke, Sasuke will always be the one that he couldn't save.

* * *

><p>Sakura slips into her apartment through the window, and dumps her muddy pack on the first bit of floor she finds. She needs to report to Tsunade and account for the early termination of her leave, and then stop by the hospital to check in before finding Naruto and apologizing, explaining, wheedling and pleading for him to stay quiet, to not ask questions <em>please<em>.

Sakura leans against the wall, just two steps to the left from the window, head in her hands, and settles for another ten deep, even breaths.

* * *

><p>Sasuke stands in the middle of the rice paddy, ankle deep in mud and wet. His feet are bare, and his toes twitch in the coolness of the damp field. The sun is just setting, and she has only been gone for two days.<p>

Sasuke hasn't slept much for the last forty eight hours, and he hasn't been in the house since Sakura left. Instead, he tilled the fields alone until he was too tired to think, the heat of the sun and the sweat rolling down his back a distraction from his own thoughts.

He tried sleeping the first night, as his aching muscles and the cool summer night promised a quick respite. He'd settled down against the broad base of an old tree and closed his eyes to the stars, waiting for rest that took hours to come. Sasuke had woken before the dawn, soaked in sweat despite the chill and in a tangle of convulsing limbs, nightmares of red and black vivid against the back of his eyes.

All day he'd burned, hands clumsily coming together in strange, half-hearted symbols that he does not understand, and now, now it's all come down to this; standing here, sunset tinting everything red and gold, calm as long as there is mud wet between his toes.

He 'd stood up, ignored the itching, the pounding of his head, of his heart, and walked right out into the rice paddies, submerged himself under weeds and growing grain and stopped-just stopped breathing as he tried to abate a fever caused by something he couldn't name.

She'd lied to him. She'd lied to him and Sasuke isn't sure why he's so surprised.

"Tell me the truth," he says to the breaking dusk, "tell me the truth and I'll go-I'll go wherever you—"

* * *

><p>The truth is this: the Uchiha have always been cursed and nothing will ever be easy, or neat. The truth is that Uchiha Sasuke has no idea of what he's promising to the wind and or what he's really asking for in return.<p>

The truth is that sometimes love isn't enough, and the road to hell really is paved with the best intentions, and a million other tired old turns-of-phrase.

The truth is that Uzumaki Naruto has teleportation points set up all the way to the edge of Fire's border, and it will take him a single day to complete a journey that would otherwise take Sakura, under the best of circumstances, two.

The truth is that Sasuke doesn't have to promise anyone anything—these are all just the inevitables.

* * *

><p>Of all the legacies the Yondaime has left for him, Naruto thinks that the Hiraishin is by far the most useful. The wind rushes into his ears and then—the total vacuum of silence, over and over again it alternates, until ten blinks of the eye later he is staring at the marker that signals the end of Fire Country. He's lucky that Sakura had taken the most direct route possible, and her light thread of chakra is still there, pulsing faintly and waiting for him when he emerges from that last puff of smoke.<p>

Naruto takes the first step over the border, expecting a lightning strike, or an explosion. Something _big_—a change in perspective maybe. Anything but the same sun and the same thick, humid air clogging his throat and making him sweat. The blond isn't sure if he's asking for a sign or for something to tell him that things are going to be different now that he's stepped over manmade boundaries, as if that will make Sasuke being alive any more real.

From here, he has to go on foot, he has to run and this doesn't give Naruto time to think. On the contrary, as the grey of the sky above lightens into blue, time lets Naruto stoke his anger and his damnable hopes and his expectations—all of his expectations into a huge knot in his stomach, into a lump lodged in the back of his throat.

He runs fast and hard, the trees around him melting into hills and valleys hidden between beasts of mountains. He runs after the faintly glowing green of Sakura's chakra and prays to gods that he's never believed in that it will lead him to something more than just disappointment.

Naruto doesn't think about how Sakura had found Sasuke. Even back then, when they were both thirteen and he was making the first and only promise he would ever fail, deep down—

Deep down he'd always _knew_.

* * *

><p>Sakura makes herself a cup of tea in the aftermath. It's bitter and strong, the rising steam hot against her face. It burns a little, but she can use the heat.<p>

After a few long, tentative sips, the steam dissipates and the tea no longer scalds her tongue. Sakura sets it back down on the kitchen counter, ignores it and turns to survey her living room instead.

Her pack is still spread underneath the window, spots of mud dotting the wooden floorboards. She needs to clean that up soon, so she does. She needs to change out of her jounin uniform and soak it in the tub, or the grass stains will never wash out otherwise, so she does.

In the end Sakura has tidied the whole of her apartment, restocked her entire fridge with fresh food and caught up on all her paperwork.

Outside, the sun slides close and it is sunset. She bites her lips and realizes that she can't put it off anymore. Sakura has to find Tsunade, report, and, this time...this time she contemplates telling the truth.

* * *

><p>"You're back already?" Sakura smiles at Tsunade's brusque greeting, and for once she doesn't comment on the ready bottle of sake at her mentor's elbow.<p>

"I missed coming home," she says simply.

"Well, send a slug ahead next time so I know when to expect you. You know how much extra red tape I have to go through for your little trips." The older woman is huffy, a light scowl painting lines across otherwise smooth skin. Sakura's smile only widens because she knows what Tsunade really means—that she's missed her, that she should've come home sooner.

"I'll remember that. Do you want me to give you the report now, Shishou? Or do you want it written up for later?"

"Later. Shizune will go through it."

Sakura nods, and contemplates saying more. She wonders what her teacher will think if her most trusted student opens her mouth, tells her that she's been seeing Uchiha Sasuke in secret, that she has been teaching him to fight again and it's _okay_, don't panic Shishou because he's different now, he's changed and he's a _good_ man, a _great_ man, don't you see?

Sakura doesn't say a word, and she doesn't hesitate when she begins to leave.

"Wait."

She stops, looks over her shoulder but doesn't turn, feet poised to take the last few steps to the door, "Yes, Tsunade-sama?"

Her teacher is surveying her over a stack of papers, "Did something happen between you and Naruto? He asked where you've been going for leave and ran out of here like the devil was chasing him."

Sakura's smile freezes, disappears and her widened eyes turn her expression into an ugly parody of a grimace.

"Nothing," she finally says, "Nothing at all." Her voice does not waver and her legs do not tremble. She is calm and Tsunade's questioning gaze does not follow her down the stairs and through the halls of the Hokage Tower, all the way out into the twilight.

Sakura is unflappable the entire way to the gate, and her mind is blank, it is blank blank blank until she is safely out of Konoha, the guards never sparing her another glance because her pink hair is as good as a pass from the Godaime herself and then she is running, she is running like she has never ran before.

* * *

><p>And yes, this is where it all starts to fall.<p>

* * *

><p>Everything happens in quick bursts of color—Naruto ramming through the trees and appearing in a manic ball of energy in the clearing, blue eyes wild and searching, then reveling in the strong presence of Sasuke's chakra. It's taken him all night and half a day to reach this little backwater village in the middle of nowhere. It's not a place that he'd ever think to find Sasuke, but he figures it's probably why the reticent asshole chose it in the first place.<p>

He nearly stumbles the last few steps out into the early sunlight, tense and ready to spring, eyes already searching out dark spikes. Sasuke's chakra has left imprints on the entire clearing, a shadowy sort of green painted into the trees, even the earth itself. The Uchiha's nowhere to be found, but there is a small path leading away backwards towards a house in the distance, and in the other direction there is a stretch of rice paddies.

Naruto can't see Sasuke, he can't see anything really, past the blinding glow of sunrise, light reflecting off the water of the paddies and into his eyes. But. But he can feel him. He can feel him and he has no idea why the prick is face deep in the mud under the growing rice but it's Sasuke, it's Sasuke and he's always been a crazy sonofabitch.

It takes Naruto a split second to find exactly where he's hiding and then his legs are pumping, kicking up clods of dirt and dust and hope. The water when he finally hits it is cold, brackish. He can remember the exact moment when Uchiha Sasuke flickers into awareness and the sudden realization the sudden reality of _he's alive he's alive he's alive_ is lost in the sensation of gripping a solid arm under the muck and hauling a body, a living breathing body out of squelching mud.

Naruto pauses just long enough to yell _you bastard_ before his fist is sent flying. He catches Sasuke in an uppercut—because the dark haired man is _still_ taller—and the Uchiha is reeling, doubled over and literally _bouncing_ back out onto the water.

Sasuke rises almost immediately, wiping a trail of blood from his nose, but his eyes are not sharingan red and this incense Naruto, that apparently his long time rival still doesn't see him as a worthy opponent.

"Who the _hell_ are you?"

* * *

><p>Sasuke is confused, is angry, is—has no idea what is happening. One minute there is only silence and the water filling his ears and then the next there is an absolute <em>lunatic<em> grabbing his arm and letting one fly into his face.

There is no pause, no time for him to react, because the moment he is out of the water, the blond charges at him again and a blink of the eye later he is doubled over in pain, flattening grain and reeds with his knees pressed deep into the mud. Dirty water is splashing into his gasping mouth as Sasuke tries to regain his breath, but there is no recovery, and the stranger is _right here_, tugging him to his feet with a painful grasp on the collar of his soaked shirt.

The man puts his face close, eyes angry, and Sasuke can see the golden glow of his iris, the strange shape of the pupil. Slashes decorate his cheeks like whiskers and a headband—a Konoha headband, _Sakura_—keeps his unruly blond hair back.

"Sasuke, you dick! All this time we thought you were fucking _dead_, and you were _hiding_? Do you _know_ what you did to us? Do you know what you did to _Sakura-chan_?"

He drops his grip on Sasuke's collar, steps back with this mingled look of utter contempt, of disgust and underneath it all something that can only be described as, as some kind of fucked up _joy_.

And Sasuke is angry, he is angry and that is expected except all of a sudden there is this…this clump of words clogging his throat, words that he wants to scream and yell at this man, standing under the newly-risen sun like some fucking _hero_ with his blond hair and crossed arms, with the righteous indignation written into every line of his face.

The man stands motionless at the periphery of the field. Sasuke sees that his sandals are still dry and he remembers the faint sensation of walking across water, of standing balanced precariously on the laws of nature turned on its side. The pounding headache that he'd been able to abate with darkness and the cool of the water has reappeared, and behind his eyelids his head explodes in red, bright sparks. Sasuke clutches at his head in silence, not by preference but necessity, because even though he has so many questions, so many things to demand he cannot speak past the sudden burning pain.

"Hey," he hears the man yelling from across the field. "_Hey_. At least have the decency to _look_ at me, bastard. It's been five fucking years and you can't even look at me?"

They're vicious words, but the blond only sounds tired. Sasuke looks at him from between the cracks of his spread fingers, one hand splayed across his face, the other gripping mud from the bottom of the paddy. The glow is gone from the man's skin, from his eyes, leaving them obviously blue even from so far away. Very blue, as blue as Sakura's eyes are green, but there's no bitter biting quality in the shade and Sasuke finds it lacking. He'd expected them to burn as red as his own—

His own.

His own eyes that are now spinning Sharingan red—what is the Sharingan?—and the headache is gone, it is miraculously gone and there is this, this _something_ flooding through his eyes and the world, the world is painted in sharp relief, he can see everything he can see—

And then as abruptly as the change begins, it stops, it stops and the world is the same uniform mass of washed-out color as before, and the headache is back, except it is so much worse this time, like hammers driven repeatedly into his skull. The stranger is still, watching him with critical eyes. Sasuke staggers to his feet through some innate sense of self-preservation, of half-remembered motions and guides his tired aching limbs into a foreign stance, painting over the pain with a tight grimace. The blond man smiles grimly, like this is finally what he expects and what he's been waiting for.

"It always comes down to this, doesn't it?" He cracks a shoulder and cocks his head, smile feral. Sasuke grunts, because he's physically incapable of saying more. _Sasuke_ tells himself to stay and fight even though he does not know how, _Sasuke_ tells him that it is a matter of pride.

The dark haired man pumps chakra to his feet—he doesn't even know he's doing it, he doesn't know what this peculiar feeling is except it makes him want to run forever and on and so he does, he runs flies is so quick that he blurs. He runs—

In the opposite direction.

Sasuke runs away from Naruto.

* * *

><p>Naruto snarls; he is wild, whiskers distorted and teeth baring as fangs. His eyes are clouded red, pupils sharp as he prepares to give chase. He's oddly disappointed, the Sasuke he'd known and respected would have never ran away, the Sasuke that he believes has a reason for everything he does would have stood his ground and fought. They are both like that—everything to these two men is a high-stakes, all-in game. The odds have never mattered to either of them.<p>

All these years, Sakura's been the one to pull him back by the scruff of his neck. Even now, giving reckless, angry chase to Sasuke Naruto half-expects the feel of her cool hands brushing his nape, grasping the back of his jacket and yanking him back into her with a admonishing _Naruto what the hell were you thinking?_ but there is no Sakura, so he keeps on running.

Sasuke takes off through the fields, cutting across the narrow dirt paths dividing each stretch of land. He's as fast as Naruto remembers, flickering in and out of sight like a delusion or something else equally insubstantial.

Naruto chases, he chases and he thinks he will probably beat the sense and an explanation out of Sasuke when he catches him. With the Uchiha, it's the only thing he knows how to do.

Sasuke is blindingly fast when he chooses to be, yes, but his movements are erratic and his speed sloppy. Naruto follows his veering course from the fields and into the forest around them, and it doesn't take long to find Sasuke in a clearing, staggering against a tree, hands clutching his head in apparent pain.

Naruto freezes, and for the first time he gets the sense that something isn't right.

"Stay away," Sasuke rasps, "She's not here, she left—she left days ago. She's not—they're not—"

His chakra wavers, fizzling out and then returning, burning darker than before, flaming and Sasuke's eyes—his eyes flash back and forth from Sharingan red to slate black, over and over again. Naruto doesn't know what to do, this—Sasuke broken straining trapped—isn't what he's been expecting at all.

They've always been given pre-assigned roles to play: he is supposed to get that explanation, Sasuke, and then drag both home, and Team Seven will finally have the happily-ever-after they've wanted for years. Instead, Naruto stands there at a loss for what to do in face of this Sasuke-who-is-afraid. He fumbles for a bit before getting his words—and his bearing back.

"I _know_ she left, you bastard. You probably made her keep this a secret! Do you know what she looked like when I ran into her? _Do you_?"

The Uchiha has stopped panting now, and he's still, body upright but frozen against the tree. Naruto takes the chance to press his advantage, looking the man in the eye, "Why do you always make her cry?"

Sasuke's eyes flare crimson again, and this time they're accompanied by the spinning blades of the Mangekyou. Naruto's eyes widen as he stumbles back, but he's too late, and the next time he raises his head he is greeted with dark skies and a familiar red moon.

"Where are we, where did you take me?" And Sasuke is still there, back flush against the tree, now shaded in blacks and greys.

"How do I know? This is _your_ messed up head game." Naruto snarls. He's impatient, he wants _out_ and he wants _answers_. He doesn't have time to hang around in another freaky Uchiha construct—he's had enough of that with Itachi's head growing and crow puking.

"I _didn't do this_. It's you—"

Naruto rolls his eyes, the muscles in his calves flexing once before he's in front of Sasuke again, "You know this stuff won't work on me anymore, cut it the fuck out."

Sasuke only continues to watch the blond warily.

The Kyuubi rumbles in Naruto's head, _he's crazy, kid._

Naruto's eyes widen, _shut up you overgrown dog._

_You want to get out of here, don't you?_

_So?_

_I'm just going to give him a little nudge…_

A light, crackling with the orange-red chakra of the Kyuubi and then: nothing.

* * *

><p>The demon's chakra overloads Sasuke's system, shocks his brain and scrambles all his neural pathways and throws his synapses for a loop. It juggles everything around until the Kyuubi is satisfied. The Tsukiyomi is gone, and the bloody filthy Uchiha is rolling on the forest floor screaming screaming bent double over and the Kyuubi is glad. The stupid yellow brat is horrified though is actually rushing to the Uchiha scum's aid and the demon scoffs at this because they are both out now, yes? They are both out and he should be glad the mongrel with the ugly shifting eyes is in pain—he should always be in pain, he and his clan for thinking that they can control the almighty kitsune.<p>

The yellow boy hears the fox's thoughts and knows but he is too preoccupied with checking the fallen man's vitals to give him any mind, so in the end when the Kyuubi's had its fill of watching the Uchiha thrash he reluctantly retreats back into Naruto's mind. _No one ever says thank-you these days_, he growls.

* * *

><p>Naruto doesn't know what to do—the Kyuubi has done <em>something<em> and yes, he is free of the Sharingan now but Sasuke is also thrashing in pain on the floor.

"_Sasuke_, Sasuke, hey, _snap out of it_!" Naruto tries to get close enough to hold him down, but the Uchiha seems to want none of that. He's on his feet in an instant instead, leaves and grass sticking to his dark hair, strands matted to his face and forehead with sweat.

"_Leave me alone_, leave me _alone_," Sasuke groans, and Naruto can see from the space between the hands pressed to the Uchiha's face that his eyes are still wide open, still a mad swirling red.

The Uchiha curses and doubles over again, and Naruto is so desperate that he decides the only way to make the man calm again is to knock him out. His fist is already readying itself for a decisive blow when Sasuke's head snaps up. Growling, the taller man flash-steps once, and then he's gone.

Naruto's left standing by himself in the clearing, arm still drawn back for the punch. Cursing, he struggles to find Sasuke's chakra, only to realize that the stuff blankets _everything_ so that he has no idea where the man himself went. The dark, malevolent touch it lends to the air makes Naruto's stomach turn.

Right then, Uzumaki Naruto realizes his mistake. He should've gone and talked to Sakura first.

The blond makes a decision, feet angling him towards the direction Sasuke had vanished, head turned towards home.

Naruto turns and starts his way back to Konoha.

* * *

><p>Sasuke somehow manages to stumble back to the house, although he doesn't make it the entire way. Instead, he collapses on the edge of the property, craving shade from the sun—anything to make the burn in his lungs behind his eyes in all the little spaces between his joints stop.<p>

There are voices in his head, so many voices that layer thickly in cacophonies of _you lack hatred destroy konoha they were lying the entire time you bastard come home sasuke-kun sasuke-kun why did you throw yourself away sasuke-kun i can't kill you foolish little brother—_

When he passes out, the nightmares of a past life lived follow him into the darkness.

* * *

><p>Sakura cannot breathe, she is running so fast. She is flying flinging throwing herself from instance to instance, and hopefully every soldier pill popped is a small miracle that will let her meet Naruto's breakneck speed, and she will intercept him and find him and stop him and come clean before Sasuke does it for her. <em>Sasuke<em>, oh Sasuke, her heart beats in erratic rhythm to the sound of his name and her half-muttered prayers to gods that she does not remember.

If Naruto finds Sasuke, if Naruto _confronts_ Sasuke, Sakura does not know what she will do. She wonders if there will be blood, if either of the two will be so furious with her, so _mad_ that no amount of lies or truth will ever fix it; she wonders if Sasuke will remember and if Sasuke will stay. Her brain tells her _yes_ but her heart hopes he will say no, that he will be so disgusted with those five years lost that he will go back to Konoha straight-away, and there, at home, they will rebuild Sasuke anew.

But that isn't how it'll turn out, and Sakura knows—Sakura knows because she's always been the smart one. Even if Sasuke remembers, he won't, he _can't_ just discard all the new bits of himself that he's made and earned as someone else. Being _Kun-chan_ isn't something that he can slip on and off like a well executed genjutsu. He will remember and he will still love and he will want to stay.

And Sakura, Sakura reiterates to herself that she's not so selfish that she will begrudge him his growth away. She loves that he can love and laugh and tease now, she loves that Uchiha Sasuke is more whole and more fixed than he ever could have been while with her, because this Uchiha Sasuke has never been broken.

Sakura breathes quick, broken breaths and runs faster than before.

* * *

><p>When Uchiha Sasuke wakes, he <em>knows<em>. He knows and the sun is just rising, and it should be as if no time's passed at all, but it has and he cannot find it in himself to forgive anyone, least of all her.

* * *

><p>Sasuke is waiting for her before she even enters the town proper. Sakura stops just short of ten feet away and attempts to read his face. His eyes are shuttered and his clothes are muddy, dark streaks across startlingly pale skin. But there is no blood and no chakra and he is not holding a sharp object at her throat, so Sakura chooses her words haltingly, wonders if her prayers have been answered.<p>

_I'll go to temple all the time now if they are_, she thinks, and it is a child's thoughts, a child's reasoning, so there is no surprise when—

"Hello Sasuke-san," she says, forcing a tidy smile to surface.

"Rough night?" She asks, looking at his clothes.

—his chakra explodes and suddenly he is everywhere. His eyes are a red that she's never forgotten and.

And.

* * *

><p>And he is <em>furious<em>, furious and suddenly, suddenly he is seeing her for the first time. He can appreciate the changes now, the spare curves and the clean lines of her limbs. He sees who she was and what she had to do to become who she is today.

In this one blazing, bright moment of understanding and clarity, Haruno Sakura is beautiful to him. The part of him that is _Kun-chan_ wars with the part of him that was Uchiha Sasuke. He wants to strike her, to hurt her—no, to protect her, to draw her into the circle of his arms and tell her she never, ever has to make the kind of hard choices she's used to ever again.  
>The only thing he is one hundred percent sure of, as the dim memories glow brighter and burn hotter and his heart grows and shrinks and bursts is that he is very<p>

very

angry.

So Sasuke compensates. He puts all of his frustration and hate and betrayal and _want_ into his hits, into _Katons_ and the crackling lightning of the _Chidori_.

But she doesn't fight back, instead Sakura dodges and evades and does what every good medic nin must. She throws up walls of earth when necessary and he soon realizes that even as he gives chase, as he relishes the feel of chakra flooding the pit of his stomach and the hollow spaces between his ribs with warmth, that she is leading their fight away from the village and away from the main road.

She doesn't want anyone else to get hurt.

Sasuke thinks this is laughable, that it is a perfect example of Sakura's bullshitting self-sacrificial insanity, and the thought of that just makes him even angrier. It's not even that she's kept the truth from him, decided on her own whim to change him and lie to him and make him into who _she_ thinks he should be, no. Sasuke remembers. He remembers everything and that includes the last few hours leading up to his 'untimely demise'.

He remembers what she did and here, now he can see that she hasn't changed at all.

Sasuke has just finished singeing the edge of her skirt with a Katon before he's charging up another Chidori again. Not a full blast—a shock, just a shock, but he has to get close to hit her and their proximity will always be a thing that unnerves him, and he wishes that he still has his sword, that—

Apparently Sakura feels the same, because she stumbles and nearly falls and he manages to make contact, and the brush of her skin even through the Chidori somehow makes everything real. He is _Kun-chan_ again and he is balking at the sound of her muffled cry, a hard grunt that tells him she is feeling pain. Sasuke shakes it off though, because some of the things that he used to know best were how to hold grudges and be so blindingly furious that he matches the heat of his favorite techniques.

She is sprawled on the ground now in the conclusion of her fall, and Sasuke stands over her with a sick sense of triumph. Her eyes are huge and green, the dappled sunlight lending quiet shadows to her skin. Pink strands of hair are matted to her cheeks with sweat, and there is this urge in him to brush the pieces away, to touch her again, to wrap his hands around her slim throat and _squeeze_.

"Is this how you thought it would all turn out?" His first words offered are harsh, would have been loud if the reverberations of accusations implied hadn't lost themselves to the trees.

Sakura says nothing, and the desire to take hold of her is still strong, so Sasuke drops into a crouch and tips her face up to the light with his index finger. Her face isn't as dramatically different like he thought she'd be, like _Kun-chan_ had remembered her. Her skin is clear and her eyes will still be green, if she'd open them—because they're closed at the moment, had closed the second he'd touched her—and her lashes tangle messily at the corners, but she isn't a great beauty. Her features are just a little bit too irregular to ever accommodate that easy ideal of perfection.

It's a face that Sasuke can easily recall from his past, and any changes are so subtle that he has to pause to find and name them.

But even though he is no longer just _Kun-chan_, even with his memories back and intact and beating against the insides of his skull, Sasuke still wants to touch her. He's wanted to touch her since before he'd died. And Sasuke is—Sasuke is _impulsive_ at the best of moments so he barely has time to be surprised at himself before he's taking a firmer hold of her chin, angling her head just so, and slanting his lips firmly over hers.

Sakura makes a quiet sound in the back of her throat, almost a sob but not quite. Her lips part under his, and her mouth is soft and warm, _she_ is soft and warm despite all her clean kunoichi lines.

Kissing Sakura, he realizes, is as if the best parts of fighting have been combined and all the unnecessary inconveniences have been parsed from the equation—there is that sense of loss, of competition and strategy and little victories in the tangling of their tongues and the way her hand claws and clutches at the dirt beneath her with need. It's not even kissing, really, Sasuke dimly thinks, it's some twisted punishment that he doesn't know if he's enacted for himself or her, and the thought makes him tear his mouth away, makes him aware of the way their harsh breathing fills the silence of the forest. Sakura's chest moves with every rapid, shallow breath she takes, and every other half second her red-clad front brushes against his arm; that is how close they are.

"Was that what you wanted?" he asks savagely.

And then, "I remember _everything_."

Sasuke doesn't shift his grip, and he continues to clutch her chin, forcing Sakura to meet his eyes. They're wide, glassy, and this time she does not close them.

"No," she says, voice soft and defeated, "it wasn't what I wanted at all."

**tbc**

* * *

><p><strong>an: **Thanks for being so patient with me! I hope this lived up to everyone's expectations. :) Also, extra long chapter to compensate for extra long wait. And as a side note, it's currently eight in the morning here, and I've been awake since eight in the morning_ yesterday_, so yeah, any typos you find are going to have to be fixed later, when I give the chapter another look-through.

And as always, I appreciate every one of your reviews, comments, concrit, etc! If you have any questions, just ask and I'll do my best to answer.


	6. Part VI

**a/n: **Thanks so much to Unicorn Paige for beta-ing this for me! Your edits were perfect!

* * *

><p><strong>Part VI<strong>

Sasuke watches Sakura with shadowed eyes as she shakily pushes herself to her feet. She isn't looking at him, but he can see her trembling limbs for himself.

Sakura shakes but does not cry.

"You had no right," he says hoarsely, headache pounding hard. "_You__ had no right_."

He feels drained all of a sudden, like they'd been hurtling towards something narrowly avoided with the kiss. Maybe it's the lost momentum, he thinks, and wishes that he is back under the cool mud of the fields—but that's _Kun_ talking, he realizes, and squashes desires that Sasuke can't help but feel aren't his own. But they _are_, and then _Mayuri-san will begin to worry if I'm not back by noon_.

"I did what I had to do," Sakura says, and for the first time since they began fighting her voice is strong; soft, but sure.

He growls, moves towards her and traps one wrist with his hand. He knows that she can easily break his hold, if only she wants to. Sasuke dares her with a glare.

Sakura doesn't move.

"_You had no right,_" he repeats, "_either_ time. You don't fuck with someone else's life like that, you just—"

"Just _what_, Sasuke-kun? Was I supposed to kill you on sight? Maybe take you back to Konoha once I found you and leave you on the doorsteps of Hokage Tower to wait for your execution?" Her voice grows in strength as she speaks, but Sasuke's anger has begun simmering at the return of the familiar suffix.

_Goddammit_, but Sakura had _always made him angry_. It was—there was always something. It'd been her helplessness in the beginning, the way her voice could draw calm and reason and logic (and sometimes, he still refuses to concede, a frustrating kind of peace), and then later it'd been her strength, her stubbornness and refusal to just _quit_, _give up_, face the fucking reality that they were on different sides then. And she was probably better off squirreled away as some no-name jounin's pretty chunin wife because _the world will break you, _don't you fucking _see?_

Except that had made him angry, too, in the rare spare moments Sasuke had given his thoughts over to her and Konoha and old genin bonds.

He opens his eyes again—when had he closed them?—to find her looking at him expectantly, bitterness written in the furrows on her forehead and the rigidity of her wrist underneath his hand.

"The truth," he snarls. "I would've wanted the truth."

* * *

><p>There is silence for several long moments, for just a few seconds, before, "You're still in love with me."<p>

Sakura jolts, finally rips her arm from Sasuke's grasp. His voice is rough, and she thinks she can easily mistake it for disdain—or disapproval? His eyes, she notices too late, are spinning Sharingan red now.

"What were you going to do? Leave me here in ignorance and then clap yourself on the back for a job well done?" He moves closer, edges into her personal space until his blood red eyes are the only things she can see. Sasuke doesn't touch her, but he is close enough that his words roll over her lips in a cool exhale.

Sakura refuses to back away, to give an inch, because that would have been conceding defeat.

His voice drops lower. "Don't kid yourself, Sakura. You like playing the martyr."

The words have hardly begun to leave her cold when he moves away, gives her her hands and inches and _air_ back. Sakura wants to protest, wants to scream because _that is not true never true _but the Sharingan spins faster and suddenly—

* * *

><p><em>(5 years ago.)<em>

It's not something she has to think about. The ground rumbles around her with the weight of thousands of simultaneously fired jutsu and the blood—the blood is everywhere. It's not a battle, anymore. In the end, there are no tactics or orderly rows of shinobi spitting fire and phalanxes of kunai like the well rehearsed soldiers they're supposed to be. There are only blurred lines and the desperate struggle for life.

She's in the thick of it, having left the medical tents in Shizune's care a long time ago. Sakura is a fighter—she _needs_ to be out there with Naruto, with Sa—

Sakura blinks back tears of frustration, hands curling into fists as she dodges a wayward jutsu.

_There_. In the distance, she sees the familiar spark-bright glow of the Rasenshuriken, resplendent as it lights the carnage around it in a peaceful blue. A loud explosion, and suddenly Naruto is there, rising above the tree line on the back of a newly summoned Gamabunta. He yells his triumph, the toad charging towards Madara on some far-flung precipice that she can't see. Sakura screams too—but only in her head, for him to be careful, _please_ be careful—because they all had to _live_ through this _please_.

He's maybe a hundred feet away, and moving fast. She mercilessly pumps chakra into her feet, ignoring the blistering burn, and runs for it. Naruto's burning through the Kyuubi, and she wants to—needs to be there if something goes wrong, if only by virtue of being a distraction until Yamato-taichou gets to them.

A copse of burnt trees—the remains of Konoha's once great forests—separates that last stretch of distance between her and Naruto. Taking a labored breath, Sakura floors it, a red blur as she prepares to Shunshin the last few remaining yards, but _then_ she sees a flutter of white, and Uchiha Sasuke is landing light on his feet not three yards away. Something inside her chest stutters and nearly stops—she's avoided thinking about Sasuke for the majority of the war except when she _had_ to. News of the younger Uchiha scion was scarce, so it'd been easy to put him from her mind, even if he had loomed the largest in her best friend's.

He's heading towards Madara too, there's no other explanation, and the sheer fact of Naruto against Sasuke and Uchiha Madara terrifies her. It's not that Sakura lacks faith, but she knows where Naruto is weak—_she _knows that Sasuke knows exactly what buttons to push to make the blond lose focus, break concentration for just that one crucial second.

Sakura is fast, but Sasuke is faster, and she still trails a good two yards behind when a group of masked ROOT shinobi drop into a crouch around him. Sasuke doesn't even stop, Kusanagi already drawn, cutting down the shinobi with a ruthless grace that she half-remembers from childhood. But what he doesn't see, what Sasuke _doesn't_ see are their chakra-strung senbon and fuma shuriken heading straight for his unprotected back.

Sakura knows what she is supposed to do, what she _should_ do—let the weapons find their mark, let the cold metal rip into Uchiha Sasuke's flesh and bone and tear him to shreds, let him—if Konoha is lucky—die.

Instead, what Sakura does is this: she's barely finished with the seals for another Shunshin when she's unsheathing her tanto, bursting through the group of stunned nin and throwing herself in front of the fuma shuriken. There's no time to turn and look for Sasuke's reaction, only the pain of metal biting deep into her shoulder and the adrenaline as more ROOT nin flicker into existence. But Sakura plays her part exceptionally well, and the dozen or so shinobi have to split into two fractions to deal with them both.

Sakura smiles, all grim lines and hard green-flecked eyes, because now Sasuke will be forced to divert his path from Naruto and the summit.

But more than that—her heart whispers, beats, screams—but more than that, he will live.

* * *

><p>Sakura pulls back with a sharp gasp as she is wrenched out of her memories, Sasuke's face inches from hers again. "<em>Do you know what you cost me?<em> The elders were on that summit, _Sakura_. Do you know what they did? I could've ended it _right then and there_—"

"You wouldn't have lived!" she says loudly, fiercely. "You could have—you _would_ have died, and none of it would have mattered. Don't you _see_, Sasuke? Nothing would have, nothing would have—!" She takes a ragged, dragging breath, and his eyes drop, just briefly, because he died regardless, didn't he?

"I'm not sorry for what I did. I haven't even _thought_ about it, that's how _not sorry I am_." And he responds to her savage declaration with one of his own. "And fucking with my life? Fucking with my memories? Are you sorry for that, Sa-ku-_ra_?"

But even the rage is colored with a kind of tired weariness now, and she can tell because she always can, and that tilt of the head is new, isn't it? It's new, and something she's picked up on and glossed over during those days spent as Kun-chan's tutor because she'd only ever looked for the familiar.

"You were, you _are_ happier," she says, and wonders if she should explain. Wonders if she _can_ explain. "It was the logical thing to do."

And because he knows these crucial parts of her better than anyone, because she's laid herself out for him to dissect all those years and years ago, he says, "It would've never made _you_ happy."

Sakura wants to protest, wants to tell him that _as long as you're alive and happy and Naruto is alive and happy and there is peace, peace of course, why wouldn't I be?_ How _couldn't_ I be?

They both know why, like he'd known all along that she was still in love with him five years ago, kunai shaking at his back. He doesn't have to say it out loud, but he's spent sixteen years living as Sasuke and not even five as Kun _so_, he doesn't say anything, but his glance is cutting and that tells her more than his words ever will.

Sakura's gaze dips. She steps back and looks away. There are several seconds of silence, and when she looks up again, she is left standing in a new patch of sunshine, alone.

* * *

><p>Sakura doesn't think to follow him, to stop him and makes sure he doesn't do something <em>Sasuke <em>and _stupid_ for at least another five minutes. When she does, funneling the dredges of her chakra to her feet once again, the only thing Sakura can think of is how she always gives him a head start.

She wonders if that says something about herself.

* * *

><p>Sasuke doesn't have a concrete idea of where he's going. His head tells him to move in one direction, but his feet take him in another. He can't figure out if he's running away from something or running towards something, and that would bother him if he wasn't going so fast—he's always been the fastest, if not the best, even his brother hadn't been faster than him, his brother, his brother and his dying breath and his fingers sliding bloody slow down his face—<p>

Sasuke almost stops, almost trips over roots and leaves and pebbles scattered along the forest floor, but his memories are back and so is the demand for composure and perfection and the realization of all the clan expectations of what a good Uchiha should be, so he doesn't. He doesn't and keeps going and the pain splits at his head and pounds at his skull and the back of his neck is slick with sweat, but he keeps going and when he does stop, gracefully, smoothly, painfully and without any actual awareness, he finds himself in front of a house, a house that he knows and has called home for the last five years, and Sasuke does not know how to feel.

The decision is taken from him when a blur rockets out the front door and knocks into him, and old shinobi instincts would have had the girl's head off in a second, but he recognizes the feel of the arms banding around his waist and his own are already automatically rising to pat her tentatively on the shoulder. The touch isn't alarming or so intrusive that he recoils, but Sasuke is taken aback by that, the ease of contact and the novel idea that he's not _enduring_ anyone's touch anymore, that someone touching him just _is_.

But something else is missing, too, and he briefly wonders if the want of touch and awareness was only reserved for those from his past or if it was just Sakura. He wouldn't be surprised either way.

"Kun-chan! We were so _worried_ about you!" Ama says, her face still hidden in the fabric of his shirt. She pulls back a second later, but her arms still rest lightly against his back.

"And you stink." The girl makes a face, and Sasuke has to remind himself to smile as he pointedly removes himself from her arms. Amaya looks different to him now that he sees her with retrospective and practiced shinobi eyes. She's soft with her sloping curves, and slow, easy to crush or hurt. There's strength in her tenacity, but it's misplaced. He wonders what she'd say if he tells her who he really is, what he's done and what he still feels like he needs to do.

He looks at this girl with the brown eyes and wrinkling nose and the distaste for his mud splattered clothes, and thinks of another with unyielding fists and a glare, a green, cutting glare and something sharp once held at his back, and Sasuke doesn't compare.

Sasuke doesn't even _think_ to compare.

Then there's a gasp. "Kun-chan! Your eyes!" He blinks, and belatedly realizes that his Sharingan is still activated.

Amaya takes another step back, looks frightened and enraged all at once. "What's happening to you, Kun-chan? First you're, you act like some kind of _ass_ and then you disappear for days. Do you know how worried mother was? She was going to make father send out a search party for you!"

The girl's voice grows as she speaks, and the noise brings the rest of the family outside. Mayuri is the first to get to them, all entreating eyes and reassuring hands, holding Ama back, placating and gentle.

"But okasan! You can't—look at him! He can't just run off like that and not tell us _anything_!"

Fuyu-san comes out a second later, shutting the half-opened door behind him with a bang. Sasuke is faintly glad that Akihiko is still inside, probably taking his midday nap.

The discordant noise cuts through Amaya's protests, and she falls silent, looking at her father with pleading eyes.

"Amaya, enough. Go inside with your mother." The older man addresses the comment to his daughter, but it is Sasuke that he looks at with a stern gaze, and this bothers him, even if it never has before. Even before his memories, even when he'd felt the need to protect these people with his dying breath because they'd saved him and given him back so much, Sasuke has never felt the urge to call Mayuri and Fuyu his mother and father. It'd never felt right, and now he knew why, and the way Fuyu is looking at him reminds Sasuke of Fugaku and the disapproval that he'd always gotten and the approval he'd always craved.

Sasuke is, in fact, impatient, almost irritated, but he keeps his silence and Ama eventually turns away with one last angry glance. She is exactly five steps from the door when Sasuke feels the chakra signature rushing towards him, and four when Sakura finally bursts through the trees.

His name is the first thing she yells. Loud enough to cut across the field, loud enough to yank Amaya, snarling, back into place as she whirls around the moment the first syllable of _Sasuke-kun!_ leaves Sakura's lips.

* * *

><p>Sakura wants to take his name back the second she sees the Endo clustered around Sasuke, eyes wide and frozen at her entrance. But she can't turn back time, and the only thing she <em>does<em> do is slide to a halt in front of Sasuke, doubled over at the waist. She is burning, running on the last fumes of her chakra, and her legs feel like they're crumbling at the bone.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura says again, haltingly because she doesn't know how to start in front of these people. She can't see his eyes, bowed at this angle, hands clasping her knees as breaths leave her in great, panting gasps, and his silence afterwards leaves a bitter taste in the back of her mouth.

Sakura never saw Amaya coming.

* * *

><p>Naruto had felt her signature the second she entered Kaze No Kuni, had backtracked instantly and then lost her in the sudden blaze of Sasuke's chakra. The Uchiha's signature blanketed everything, flaring and nearly choking in its raw power. It'd been a long time since Naruto had felt it unrestrained, and the backlash took him by surprise. But he'd turned around anyways, and followed the imprints of his own footsteps back to the fields where he'd left Sasuke behind, followed the dark malingering trail of power because, because the blond knew he would be with Sakura-chan.<p>

And the thought twists at his gut because the idea of Sakura being alone with the unstable Sasuke he'd found kills him—puts her in danger and Naruto, he's the cause, the one who'd dragged a dead body out of the muck and breathed life and madness back into it.

That's what he believes, and he doesn't care if it makes no sense, doesn't care that—Sasuke's chakra subsides, Sakura's weakening thread rising to replace it, and Naruto runs harder, afraid to use Shunshin or the Hiraishin because he's afraid that he'll lose the trail, that between one breath and the next Sakura's signature will disappear and he will lose her, too.

* * *

><p>Amaya tears herself away from her mother with an angry, high-pitched noise and hurls herself at Sakura.<p>

"_You_! You _bitch_!" She should move, she _does_ move, but now her legs do fold beneath her and Amaya is at her throat in an instant. Distantly, Sakura thinks that if the younger girl had been a nin, if she'd held anything vaguely sharp in her hands, she would be dead. Godaime's great apprentice laid low by a nineteen year old girl—a civilian even, and the thought is sobering enough that it rallies Sakura to her feet, lets her sidestep with sloppy finesse.

Sasuke steps in then, a quick blur of black, of long arms that sweep Amaya to the side, behind him, and Sakura at first thinks _he doesn't have to protect me from her_ but then, then she realizes who he's _really_ protecting, who he's shielding instinctively behind his back and who he is willing to fight. And the hurt is so visceral that she has to bite her lips from crying out.

(Because he has his memories back now, and this is what she was most afraid of, wasn't it? His choosing and it never, ever being about her.)

Sakura tries to laugh, tries to tell him that she is out of chakra, that she would never even think of harming a child, that his concerns are misplaced and he should be more worried about himself. The words get lodged in her throat though, a wild, struggling thing, and the only noise she can make sounds like she is choking on air.

But Sasuke's not even looking at her, because the girl behind his shoulder isn't satisfied, is clawing at his stained shirt and spitting words and accusations like fire, like kunai and shuriken. And because she can tell he doesn't want to hurt her, because even before this he'd never allowed his team to hurt civilians, she breaks free and launches herself at Sakura again, and this time she doesn't miss, and Sakura doesn't move out of the way anymore.

* * *

><p>He moves the second Ama manages to push her way past him.<p>

Sasuke snarls, ignores Mayuri's terrified gasp and Fuku's voice yelling senseless nothings because it's all noise, just white noise in his ear and he's there in an instant, pulling Amaya off of the stunned kunoichi and it should've ended there, except. Except he slips, his hands slip and graze Sakura's collarbone and settles at her shoulders and her skin slick with sweat surprises him, knocks him off balance.

What happens next feels like forever, feels like years and years and nothing all at once. What happens next actually only takes seconds, not even a minute, fragments of a moment—what happens next takes exactly three long breaths.

* * *

><p>They both feel Naruto's chakra burst over their skin at the same time, a blast of power so palpable that it seeps into the air, pulls the breath straight from their lungs. Sasuke's Sharingan reacts without warning, Chidori sparking into life along the edges of his fingers, still curled at the base of Sakura's neck. There's no time, no warning, no—<p>

* * *

><p>Naruto is close, he's so close and is that, yes that is Sakura-chan's chakra, feeble and pulsing weakly and Sasuke's, Sasuke's so strong overpowering hers and there's that spike, that fluctuation of fear in her normally tightly controlled green and he's afraid, Naruto is so afraid but he doesn't know for who (for whom, she sometimes corrects absentmindedly and he'd laugh and she'd smile but he doesn't think she ever knew why)—for her, for what he'll find. He thinks that it should be alright, it has to be alright because he'd always believed in Sasuke, <em>still<em> believes in Sasuke, even if the bastard's been playing dead for years, even if he's zombified and kind of crazy, 'cause he's got to have his reasons, right?

* * *

><p>Naruto sees this:<p>

He sees Sasuke, face fierce, eyes red, hands tightening at the base of Sakura's throat, and there is the telltale edge of blue. He sees Sakura, barely standing on shaking legs, Sakura, her chakra scraping low and gasping in pain as the electricity lances through her. It's a small shock—tiny really, but it's enough to get him seeing red, for fangs to grow and his hands to sharpen into claws. They're both looking at him as he slams through the trees, and there're others there too, a girl and an older couple, a frozen tableau and because Naruto's finally learned the bare minimums of restraint he would've stopped—he _could've_ stopped, but this is an old nightmare. An old fear even as he's gone on believing and trusting in Sasuke, because Naruto has seen the Uchiha almost snap Sakura's neck like she was nothing to either of them.

He heads straight for Sasuke, who lets go of Sakura and grabs the brunette, shoving her behind him, Sharingan still pin-wheeling wildly. Sakura stumbles in the aftermath of his momentum and Naruto is just close enough to catch her and the ends of her expression, surprised and panicked and dazed, green eyes glassy. Her weight throws him back, and it's so oddly reminiscent of the last time that he's had to save her from the Uchiha that the blond's memory blurs, until they're all sixteen and there is fresh blood in the air, a long knick on his cheek, and Sasuke's deranged laughter as he tries to explain away their bonds.

There's nothing deliberate in the way he summons his clones or the way his fingers form the familiar seals, there's nothing deliberate at all in the way the Rasengan spins in his hands, there's only a sort of half-remembered rage and an odd kind of heartbreak.

* * *

><p>Sasuke's eyes widen, because Naruto's gone feral, because Naruto's not stopping, and he barely remembers to turn and shove Amaya at Mayuri, the word <em>go<em> exploding from his throat in a hoarse scream. The Chidori rips into existence, and the air around them bursts into the chirping trills of a thousand birds. He can barely see Naruto over the sharp, strobing lightning.

The two boys, the two men each take one slow step forward—and then they run.

* * *

><p>But they'd forgotten about her, and oh, wasn't this funny because she remembers the same thing happening once years and years ago, when she was still thirteen and they stood on a crumbling hospital rooftop. They'd run then, and forgotten her, too. And there is this sudden welling of energy, and she doesn't even need chakra to make her fly—Haruno Sakura moves fast, blurs through on sheer will alone, and she is hardly thinking. In fact, she doesn't think at all.<p>

Sakura runs, and this time there is no Kakashi to get in the way.

The Rasengan nearly cleaves clean through her left shoulder and the Chidori hits her somewhere below her ribs. There is no pain.

**tbc**

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><p><strong>an: **As usual, thank you all for the feedback and concrit! Doubly thanks to all the sharp-eyed readers out there who've caught typos and mistakes.

Ahaaa, I wonder how you guys will feel about this chapter?


	7. Interlude

**in·ter·lude**, _noun_: an intervening or interruptive period, space, or event :interval.

* * *

><p><strong>Interlude<strong>

When it happens, he barely registers the sickening crunch of his hands sinking through flesh, through bone—the warm gush of blood, how for an instant he can feel her entire body pulsing through his; a giant metronome, heartbeats measuring life.

And she doesn't fall because his fist is still lodged somewhere between her ribs, and Naruto's has struck right through her arm, her shoulder, and she coughs, splutters and he can hear the gurgle and gush of blood filling her lungs. The glow of his and Naruto's combined techniques finally fade away, and then;

And then there is the silence.

* * *

><p>Once, a long time ago, Sakura turned to him and asked, "Do you think we'll ever get punished for the things we're asked to do?"<p>

It was late, and they had left Wave just hours ago. Sasuke had shrugged, mumbled something about annoying questions and quickened his pace to catch up with the rest of the team. Sakura stayed behind, expression faraway and thoughtful.

Back then, her hair had still been long.

* * *

><p>The quiet doesn't last long, and Naruto's <em>Sakura-chan!<em> crests over Mayuri's short, sharp scream, over Fuyu's _great god_ and for once, for once Ama is quiet—has nothing to say. But Naruto does, _is_ saying things, quick and fast; a stream of _oh god no sakura-chan sakura-chan i'm so so sorry you're going to be okay don't worry _you have to be okay _i promise_ under his breath, and Sasuke can't really hear him over the rush of air in his ears, a loud roaring of white noise, can't see anything past all the blood spilling from under his hands. So much blood for someone so small.

* * *

><p>Eventually, he is aware of someone else at his back, a tentative touch at the base of his spine.<p>

"Fuyu—Fuyu is sending for the village doctor now. Kun, you can't let go yet, do you hear me? If you let go she'll bleed out."

A hand pushes him gently to the ground, and Sakura's body follows, a dead weight that the blond man opposite him supports with red streaked arms; the color soaks into her hair, smears ruined red cloth brown.

* * *

><p>"S—Sasuke-teme, I have to leave, I have to go and get baachan. You can't let her die, you hear me? <em>You can't let her die<em>."

* * *

><p>He thinks he sits there for a long time, alone and counting the slow, faint beats that shudder up and down the length of his arm. The noise fades after a while, and he has never known silence like this, like the wind passing between the cracks of his brittle bones.<p>

* * *

><p>Her life trickles slowly through the spaces between his fingers, and <em>it's not a metaphor<em>; her dying by his side isn't a metaphor and neither are the scraps of Naruto's headband tied tight above her wrecked arm. None of this is a story that will be told to future generations of Leaf nin, and no one will ever end it with her dead and a _you see children, there's a lesson to be learned here._

He won't let it.

* * *

><p>Sasuke doesn't know how long it takes for the village doctor to arrive, but it is enough for far too much blood to be pooling around her body, for the beats of her heart to become excruciatingly faint.<p>

There is a long, drawn out breath, and the Uchiha looks up to see the man staring at the girl lying prone at his feet. He kneels, middle-aged and bespectacled. There is nothing remarkable about him, nothing that suggests to Sasuke that he will be competent enough to perform the miracles needed to stitch Sakura back together—he isn't even _worthy _of touching her in fact, and there is the ugliest sound when the stranger reaches out to touch her. It takes Sasuke a moment to realize it's coming from himself.

(But he'd put the hole—the holes—through her in the first place. He is responsible for the spilled blood and yet here he is still lodged, knuckles deep, scant foot away from her bare, beating heart, and it makes him sick, it makes Sasuke _so sick_.)

The doctor gives him a measured look, and his hands do not tremble at the sight of all the blood and mangled flesh.

"I used to work in Sand during the war, Kun-san. I've seen it all; _I'm going to help her._"

Left unsaid is the _unlike you_ and maybe Sasuke may have imagined it, but there is a touch of scorn in the corner of the man's eyes, disdain in the turn of his shoulders and the dip of his chin. He may have imagined it, but that doesn't mean Sasuke thinks he deserves it any less.

"Aa," he manages to say, and the word settles heavy over his bent back.

* * *

><p>"It's strange, she has already started healing. See how the blood is coagulating around her shoulder? The muscles are actually…almost <em>knitting<em> themselves back together. I think the only reason her side hasn't stopped bleeding altogether is because Kun-san's hand is still there. No, no Mayuri-san, it's not his fault, or yours, anyone else would have done the same in this situation."

And that isn't a metaphor either, Sasuke decides, tries to tell himself—

it _is not_.

* * *

><p>He is standing up now, and even though his hands are swinging uselessly by his side, he still feels the warmth of her blood. And when Sasuke closes his eyes, he can remember with terrifying clarity the look on Sakura's face right before he'd struck; that half-second of her features all washed out in blue, the set of her mouth and the finality in the down sweep of her lashes<em>—<em>an acceptance that'd triggered in him a furious type of refusal.

"_You could have—you __would __have died, and none of it would have mattered. Don't you __see__, Sasuke? Nothing would have, nothing would have—!"_

Looking down at Sakura's still, pale form, at the red flecking her face, soaking her hair, at the white glimpse of bone mere moments before skin heals over, Sasuke thinks he finally understands what she'd meant.

* * *

><p><strong>an: **The link to gift!fic requests is up on my profile. As always, you guys overwhelm me with all your kind words, and any feedback is greatly appreciated. :)


	8. Part VII

**a/n:** Unbeta'd because I didn't want to inflict this on either Paige or Christine.

* * *

><p><strong> Part VII<strong>

The first thing Tsunade sees is the blood dyeing the grass red. There's no other sound except for the wind whistling through high reeds in the rice paddies and Naruto's harsh breathing at her back. For a devastating second the woman thinks that she might be too late, her apprentice dead with nothing but all the blood to show for it (again), but then she feels the chakra flickering weakly at the edge of her senses, and the darker, muted power roiling near.

Naruto notices before she does and he wastes no time in running towards a house she hadn't seen before. Tsunade follows in a split second, tracking Sakura's wavering chakra frantically, hoping that it holds, that it _has to, has to_.

The blond slams through the door a second before she does, veering through a hall that she's only vaguely aware of and straight into the heart of her student's flickering signature.

"_Where is she?_" There's a small group of people gathered in the the room, clustered around the small coffee table in the middle and hiding whatever's lying on top of it from view. With a sickening lurch in her stomach Tsunade realizes—

The man who'd been bent over the table turns to look at the two newly arrived nin. Tsunade sees a flash of red-mottled pink before her view is blocked again.

"Ah, Tsunade-sama! It's an honor to—"

Tsunade doesn't stop to ask how someone in this tiny village knows her name; she doesn't stop to return his greeting. She only says, "Move."

The youngest in the group—a civilian girl by the looks of her—opens her mouth to maybe protest, eyebrows drawn and angry, but the man only dutifully steps aside to make way for her.

"I think she's stable now, I moved her when the injuries closed over. If there's any sort of internal damage I wouldn't know because we have no equipment out—"

There's red smeared all over his gloved hands, and there's red—there's red all over Sakura too, and her skin is deathly pale underneath that, and she is still, so still, her chakra fluctuating like a wavering sigh.

There's a raw, broken noise coming from somewhere by her side, but Tsunade ignores Naruto, ignores everyone in the room because the man knew nothing—couldn't sense the damage Tsunade could and the only thing she says is _leave_, _leave_. Everyone but Naruto does, and she lets him stay because she knows he wouldn't have left anyways, because she knows exactly how he feels.

A small sound comes from the doorway, and she turns to find Uchiha Sasuke standing on the threshold of the room with blood dripping from his hands and smeared all over his clothing. His face isn't the blank slate that she remembers from the past, rather his eyebrows crumble and the line of his jaw is so tense, so drawn that she postulates that the bones might shatter under the force of his grinding teeth.

Tsunade shuts the door in his face.

* * *

><p>He sits with his back to the wall and his head between his knees; he slumps there for so long, avoided and unnoticed, that the blood dries and begins to crust underneath his nails. His heart beats to the thrum of memories, to the thrum of regrets until the door finally opens, and then it stops beating at all.<p>

She lives—he can recognize the faint feel of her chakra.

She lives.

* * *

><p>Naruto isn't surprised when Sasuke appears next to him like a ghost: noiseless, and with a distinct feel of insubstantiality. He thinks that Tsunade finally lets him in for the same reason that Naruto only looks up once before going back to staring at Sakura-chan's grey, bloodless face. He'll yell at the Uchiha later, if Obaasan doesn't get to him first.<p>

Naruto doubts it, though.

There's the sound of a chair scraping back, and neither men say a word as they watch Sakura breathe, her small body drowning in white, pristine sheets.

* * *

><p>Sasuke never once leaves the room. Naruto comes a close second, but he has to leave to eat, furiously fast; he has to leave to talk to the family members, to use the bathroom and because Tsunade makes him.<p>

She never once tries to force the same on Sasuke.

In fact, the man doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't even move once from her side. If his eyes ever closed, Naruto's never once caught him.

Watching Sasuke from across the bed, Naruto wonders how he'll react when the Hokage gives him the news.

He'd passed Tsunade in the halls once as he was going back to the room, and when he notes Sasuke's clenched fists inside he doesn't have to ask to get the gist of what she must have said to him. That, and the fact the entire house had heard her.

Naruto, all the way in the kitchen scarfing down a quick bowl of food, had braced himself for an explosion from the normally volatile Sasuke. Instead, there had only been silence. The Hokage had cornered Naruto next, and in no uncertain terms told him what their options would be for the last living Uchiha.

Right now, returning to Konoha would mean his death one way or another.

He was surprised but grateful that the Hokage hadn't decided to personally execute his friend herself on the spot, but Naruto had learned enough over the years from both Sakura and hanging around Tsunade's office to know the options that were open to Sasuke right now. Frankly, he hadn't liked any of them.

Now, counting the spare seconds in the suffocating silence by Sakura's bed, Naruto can't predict which path Sasuke will take. Once upon a time he had understood what motivated Sasuke like the lines etched into his own palm. But now?

Taking a shallow breath, Naruto frowns at the motionless Uchiha; Sasuke had regained his memories, but how much of each person—the avenger, the friend, the stranger—remain?

* * *

><p>Sasuke is very glad that he had never bothered to put a clock in his room; the ticking of the hands as he waited would have driven him insane.<p>

Time passes around him; people coming in and out of the room, Naruto, the Hokage and her rage—everything becomes an ebb and flow that Sasuke himself is never a part of. The only things that stay still are himself and Sakura, lying pale on his bed.

Tsunade had called him a coward, had called him worse than trash in the vein of someone else he once knew. Sasuke hadn't met her eyes until the very end, his fists clenching in the fabric of his pants as he stared at the proof of his cowardice, at the girl that he could still imagine covered in red.

His knuckles bled white but there was nothing he could do—no fight that he could win; his teeth ground against each other until his jaws felt like dust, but there was nothing he could say—nothing that wasn't true; and in the end, in the end he could do nothing with the anger at himself, at his inabilities and all his failures. He'd looked up at Tsunade, maybe in the hopes of—of some kind of…absolution, of anything, of a way to make things right or for someone to tell him where the world went wrong, but she'd only stopped mid-sentence and held his gaze for a long moment before leaving the room again.

Sasuke could have cared less.

* * *

><p>Amaya brings Naruto food once.<p>

After giving the blond the tray of rice and sides, she wastes no time in rounding on Sasuke with a scowl on her face.

"_Wake up_, Kun-san, it's not your fault; she got in the way herself. Okasan and Otousan are worried to death about you, can't you show the least bit of consideration for them?"

The girl ignores Naruto's indignant _oi_ and moves closer to Sasuke. When his eyes remain on the girl in the bed, she makes a frustrated noise. "_We_ were the ones that took you in—these stupid ninja show up _once_ in five years and all of a sudden it's like we don't exist. The past is in the _past_, Kun-chan! You were happy living with us until _she—_"

This time Naruto actually stands up, the tray of food in his lap toppling to the floor, but Sasuke speaks first, his voice rusty from disuse.

"That's enough."

"But—!"

"I said, _that's enough_." There's steel in his words, and Naruto recognizes in the tone the Sasuke-that-once-was.

The girl still glares, but now she's trembling too. With a tremulous _hmph_, she turns around and leaves the room with a slam of the door that reverberates long after she's gone.

Naruto immediately looks to Sasuke, but the man has already gone back to watching Sakura.

* * *

><p>"You know, she's right. It's not your fault."<p>

Sasuke looks up at his words, and Naruto doesn't need any help reading the contempt written across every line of the dark haired man's face.

And then, "If I say that it wasn't your fault either, would you believe me?"

He doesn't look down to his hands, but Naruto knows what he's seeing—her blood staining everything red. It's the same thing that he sees on his own, and the thought suddenly makes him angry, and it isn't just because he knows Sasuke is right.

"You don't—you don't get to feel so guilty over this, you don't even have the fucking _right_. Don't you have all of your memories back?" He never raises his voice, but his words ring loud and clear in the silent room.

"_You don't get to sit there and feel shit when back then you would've willingly killed her yourself._" He nearly _feels_ his eyes spark red, and the sight must have triggered something in the Uchiha, because he finally speaks up, voice even lower than Naruto's had been. "People do change, dead-last."

That's the last thing that he says for a long while.

* * *

><p>Everything always comes full circle, and in the end, Sasuke leaves Sakura. He feels the fluttering of her chakra steadying into the strong, even rhythm of her heart first, and then watches as her lashes flutter too: once, twice. Her fingers catch at the sheets like the tips of broken wings, and Sasuke stays just long enough to count sixty strong beats of her heart.<p>

Naruto's asleep, and as Sasuke pass by on the way to the door, he makes sure to shake the man awake.

He wakes up with a jerk and none of the spluttering that Sasuke dimly remembers from his genin days, eyes instantly snapping to Sakura when Sasuke dips his head towards the bed.

Naruto's by her side in an instant, and he does not take his eyes off of her even when Sasuke shuts the door behind himself.

* * *

><p>She lives.<p>

**tbc**

* * *

><p><strong>an:** At the very, very least, I hope this will bridge some gaps between the last part and the original part seven (now part eight). Working on the epilogue now, and it'll definitely be out before the new year. :)

Thank you for the feedback! And I apologize for typos and general, uh, ughness. (Wow, I'm eloquent.) I'll probably gives this a reread for more mistakes later tonight.

Also, if you've already reviewed the original chapter I don't think you can review again, but I'd really appreciate it if you left your thoughts in a review directed to part eight, if that makes any sense. Thanks again!


	9. Part VIII

**a/n:** This used to be **Part VII**. If you read this before it was part eight, I highly recommend you go and read the new part seven.

* * *

><p><strong>Part VIII<strong>

Sakura wakes to the sensation of sunlight falling across her skin and Tsunade's impassive face. She is alive, and the feeling of the word leaves her numb. Maybe, Sakura thinks, she should apologize. Mostly, she feels a distant sort of dread.

She looks away, turning her head towards a blank wall, wishing she were far, far away. If she tries hard enough, Sakura reasons, it might work; she might be able to fade into the too-warm blankets until her teacher is left staring at an empty bed.

There is no sound of movement and, when Sakura looks back, Tsunade is gone.

"Sakura-chan," croaks Naruto from a corner. She has to strain her neck to see him sitting on a low stool next to the door, head in his hands. She can't see his eyes or his mouth, and his voice is muffled as he repeats her name.

She lets go of the breath she has been holding since her eyes opened, relief acting as a release. Her mouth opens, but only a rasping cough comes out. Naruto is immediately on his feet, and the word _water? _is barely out of his mouth before there's a glass of it in his hands and then he's in front of her, too close for her liking after waking up resurrected in newly minted sunshine. It _feels _new, anyhow, and the brightness is jarring after spending so long under the darkness of unconsciousness. Sakura, already half-sitting, pushes the glass away and finally manages to say, "Are you alright? Is—is Sasuke all right? Did Hokage-sama—"

"You never call Tsunade-baachan Hokage-sama."

Sakura looks down. "Is Sas—"

"He's fine, neither of us got a scratch. He left half an hour ago when he noticed you were waking up. It's the first time he's left in days."

Her eyes close again, soft and slow, and Sakura doesn't know what to think.

"And Ho—Tsunade-sama? Did she—did she say anything about…"

"About the whole going behind my-_her_ back and not telling anyone that the bastard was still alive thing? Not yet."

The room fills with silence and the bitterness in Naruto's words. Sakura looks up to find the blond averting his eyes. She studies the tense line of his jaw and struggles to find the right way to answer, to explain her reasoning and justify herself, her actions, make everything alright again, make—

"Please look at me."

It might be the weakness of her voice or her shadowed eyes, but Naruto complies, and being faced with the flat blue of his stare is somehow worse than being avoided.

"I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Sakura-chan, you can't always be the one to make everything ok. That's my job."

The weak joke isn't enough to make her smile. It only causes her to twist the sheets tighter between her hands.

"I wasn't being honest to myself."

There's a pause, a catch, in Naruto's breath. She thinks he's wondering what to say next. What _is _there to say anymore?

"It's not your fault, just—just focus on getting better for now, 'k?"

There's no answer, and she doesn't look at him—not even when he leaves.

* * *

><p>He had to get out. Naruto doesn't know how to deal with Sakura's bowed head or her silence. He doesn't know how to deal with her refusal to cry or how to put a little life back into the green of her eyes. He doesn't know how to deal with the fact that every time he looked at her, he could only remember the image of his fist passing through her shoulder, the feel of muscle and bone breaking under the force of his technique.<p>

The remembering makes him sick to his stomach and he wonders when it will stop.

The Endo residence is bright and spacious, but the oppressive silence weighing over the household chases away any warmth brought by the sunlight falling through the large windows. He finds Tsunade's chakra in the kitchen—probably talking to the family—and Sasuke's roiling strength at the end of the hall.

Sulking.

Naruto still isn't sure what to say to him—he's always been better with actions than words—and if he should be angry still, and if so, how much? But they're united in this moment by Sakura, and the rage that he can feel in Sasuke's chakra, that's something Naruto can understand. They're both angry, but not at each other—at themselves.

"Sasuke. You're not going in to see her?"

Sasuke barely looks up from where he's sitting in the chair by the window at the end of the hall. "Is there a point?"

Naruto clenches his jaw. "Fuck yes there's a point! First thing she did, she asked about you. The least you can do after sticking your hand through her ribs is see how she's doing!"

He knows it's the wrong thing to say the moment the words leave his mouth—he'd been there for every second Sasuke spent kneeled by Sakura's side. He'd seen the circles under Sasuke's eyes get darker and darker, his skin turning from pale to ashen.

But there is no baiting response, no anger, no yelling. There is only silence.

Bristling, Naruto says, "You're _both _really fucked up, you know that? Sakura-chan used to be normal, and then you come in here with your emotional prissiness and the stick up your ass and you fucked her up, too! _Fix __it_, Sasuke."

Sasuke's dark eyes snap to meet Naruto's, and this time there is emotion in them. "I wasn't the one who charged first with a fucking Rasengan in my hand! If I recall, _you _were that dumbass."

There's a pause and, in both men's minds, they relive that split second of bright light, of the expression on Sakura's face and the exact moment when they realize who is between them, that there is no stopping even though they're both screaming screaming trying _so __hard _to—

Neither says anything after that.

* * *

><p>Sakura doesn't know how much time she passes in bed. She knows it hasn't even been a full day since she's been awake—not even a full hour, but the seconds still drag. She's memorized the entire room, from the smooth white plaster of the walls, the scrolls of decorative calligraphy, to the books of philosophy on the small, rickety side-table. She almost thinks to ask who this room belongs to, but the handwriting peeking out from between the sheaves of paper is familiar, and so is the smell steeped in the sheets: the trees, the rain, everything to be expected from living out here on a farm except for that hint of lightning crackling like fire.<p>

Sakura wishes that they hadn't put her in his bed, in his room. She wishes they had taken her back to Konoha, but then she probably would've died, healing jutsu be damned, and she's not so far gone as to be suicidal.

She thinks that her teacher would beg to differ. At the very least, at the _very __least_ she doesn't think anyone else had gotten hurt. If someone had, Sakura doubts that the Endo would have been amenable to letting her stay in their house.

Her throat tightens. This was all her fault.

There are light footsteps, and Sakura looks up just as Amaya enters the room with a tray. She doesn't look at Sakura as she stiffly walks over to the bed and puts the food on the less cluttered bedside table.

"Your…leader will see you after you eat."

Her voice is strained, and Sakura wonders what Mayuri and Fuyu said to keep her quiet. She almost calls Amaya back into the room to tell her that it's ok. She can scream, yell, blame and accuse as much as she wants. It's the least that Sakura can do.

Instead, though, she waits until Ama closes the door behind her, and then turns to look at the food. There is a small portion of rice porridge and a cup of water on the tray, but she only takes one sip of the water before ignoring the rest. She doesn't think she's going to have an appetite for a long, long time.

Tsunade enters with a brusque knock not long after that. The Hokage takes one look at the untouched food and frowns, displeasure creating deep grooves on an otherwise unlined face.

"You should know better than to refuse food. Seems like you're forgetting basic recovery procedures along with everything else I taught you."

There's quiet for a while as Tsunade bends over Sakura, checking her vitals, warm chakra familiar and probing, trying to relax her. It doesn't work, and her hands stay bunched around the sheets, white-knuckled.

"I apologize for disappointing you, Shisou."

Tsunade's expression doesn't waver, and Sakura feels the nausea that's been floating all day settle, finding a home deep in the pit of her stomach.

"You'll be put on probation and then attend an inquiry if it goes well."

"Tsunade-sama?" Sakura's eyes snap up to meet the Hokage's, but Tsunade ignores her.

Instead Tsunade continues, her voice clipped and to the point, "Of course, you have to stay here and recover first. There's no point in moving you now—it'd reopen all your injuries. You're lucky that you're my student—that technique of yours kept you alive."

_You're_, Sakura notices immediately. _Present __tense._ She doesn't know if she should hope or not.

"I'm…I'm still your apprentice?"

Tsunade looks at her, her amber eyes sharp. "You're very welcome not to be, if you'd like. It'd definitely save me a lot of trouble. And paperwork."

The Hokage trails off into an agitated murmur, "Lots of paper work. Between losing you and the rest of Kakashi's brats, I'd have myself a lot more free time."

Still, her touch remains gentle and the two women trail off into silence for a while.

They both anticipate Sakura's next question.

"And…Sasuke?"

"That's not something you need to concern yourself with at this point."

"Sakura," says Tsunade, weariness in her voice. "What were you thinking?"

Sakura raises her head, eyebrows furrowed. Her lips are already shaping themselves around words, but she has no idea what they are. She closes her mouth.

Tsunade's eyes soften for the first time since Sakura's seen her, and she finally says with a knowing sigh, "Never mind. I've been there, too."

* * *

><p>When she walks into the kitchen to see Sasuke, Tsunade vaguely thinks that she's getting too old to deal with this crap.<p>

The boy—man, really, but to Tsunade he'll always be the brat with the broken arms and angry eyes—sits at the front of the empty dinner table, head turned towards the light spilling through the windows.

His chin is propped on his folded hands. He doesn't even blink when Tsunade walks into the room. It's a good act, she'll give him that. One that years of aristocratic upbringing and the stick up his ass had cultivated to perfection. But they hadn't made Tsunade Hokage for nothing, and she seeks out the signs of weakness, finds it in white knuckles and the tight skin at the corner of his eyes, in the grim line of his set lips and the slight clench of his jaw.

Besides, she remembers Sasuke's face when she'd arrived to find him standing, hands dripping blood, over her wayward apprentice, and that had told her all she needed to know.

"Uchiha Sasuke," Tsunade says by way of greeting.

He finally turns his head to look at her, and the stark shadows under his eyes manage to surprise her still.

"Hokage-sama." The honorific catches Tsunade off-guard, again. She frowns and steels her resolve all the same.

"You're aware of the crimes you committed before you disappeared, yes?" The sound of the chair scraping back as she takes a seat is loud, almost drowning Sasuke's quiet answer.

"Yes."

"Defection, joining Akatsuki, attacking Leaf nin, participating in Madara's attack against Konoha, just to name a few."

He nods, but has the audacity still to raise an eyebrow. "And killing the Konoha elders didn't make the list?"

Tsunade smiles, but it's without teeth and altogether too fierce to be anything sincere. "It doesn't do you any favors to be reminding me of your past sins. I'm not one of those foreign priests and I'm not here to absolve you of anything."

Sasuke shrugs and doesn't try very hard to hide the fact that his bravado's nothing more than a tired, old habit.

"But no," she says, "in light of certain…_events_ that have occurred in the past, it would've only been a pertinent move on my part to dissolve the Council anyways. You saved me a lot of work in that respect. But it doesn't matter. Your sentence is heavy enough without factoring that in. I'm willing to take into account the circumstances of the past five years."

For the first time since Tsunade entered the room, Uchiha Sasuke looks at her with real interest. She takes a moment to wonder if she's doing the right thing, but his face as he stood over Sakura flashes across her mind again, and Tsunade knows that this time, at least, Team Seven deserves a chance.

"Uchiha Sasuke, you have a choice to make."

* * *

><p>The next person to walk through her door is Sasuke. Sakura, who'd been expecting Tsunade or Naruto, is startled enough that the book she's reading falls out of her hands. It tumbles over the edge of the bed and settles on the floor with a quiet thud.<p>

The book is one of Sasuke's—she'd seen it on the table and, to her surprise, it'd been one of poetry. The picture of Sasuke spending his nights reading haikus or sonnets in bed had almost made her smile.

Now, she feels guilty and wonders if she shouldn't have touched his things.

Sasuke doesn't spare the fallen book a single glance, though, balancing in his hands another tray holding medicine and a small container of honey.

He doesn't offer any explanation as he sets the tray on the table next to her and picks the book up from the floor, though he gives the congealing porridge on the other table a disapproving glance.

Not once does he actually look at her.

_You __look __tired_, she thinks. _I'm __sorry_, she wants to say. _I'm __so, so __sorry._

Sakura restrains herself only because she knows he probably wants to leave as soon as possible, and so the surprise is even greater when he doesn't.

Instead, Sasuke stands by the bed, hands in the pockets of his loose dark pants, inky eyes still refusing to look at her.

"The Hokage told me to bring you your medicine."

There's silence as Sakura nods, because she doesn't know what to do. Surprise still clogs her throat.

"Here, take it with the honey," he says after another moment. The hoarseness of his voice creates another pang in her chest. She can only stare with wide eyes as he plucks both bottles from the tray and hold them out in front of her.

Confused, she takes them from his hands, and Sasuke withdraws so fast that she has to look away again.

Tsunade doesn't know that she likes to sweeten her medicine with honey. Her teacher frowns upon diluting medicine with anything unnecessary, so there's no way that the gesture could have come from her.

But.

Sakura remembers asking for honey when she took tea with the Endo back when she'd been teaching Sasuke how to spar. She remembers bringing her own personal stash to add to her tasteless energy drinks as he practiced in the mornings, but she'd never actually said anything out loud.

Sakura's eyes move back to Sasuke so fast that they blur.

She guesses he'd paid more attention that she'd thought, but why had he bothered?

The man had silently drawn a chair next to Sakura's bed while she was lost in her thoughts. He sits with his legs spread and his elbows resting on his knees as he surveys her, finally, with dark eyes over the laced hands under his chin. The posture is so familiar that her eyes sting just a little.

"Tsunade said you had to take the medicine now, so take it."

Sakura looks down at the medicine and honey cradled in her lap. She doesn't know why Sasuke hasn't left yet. She wonders if it's because he, or perhaps Tsunade, believes that his being here, so close, is a form of punishment. Sakura thinks that if that's so, then they're right.

"I'm sorry." It slips out before she can help it—the words brimming from her lips—and, even to herself, she sounds desperate.

"No." Sasuke is halfway out of his seat but she has too much too say, too much that she can't make up for.

"You were right, I—it wasn't my place, I don't know what I was—"

"Shut up." He is standing now, leaning over her, hands fisted around the sheets at the edge of the bed. There is still more than a foot of space between them, yet Sakura feels like it's just that much more difficult to breathe. She avoids his gaze, his face, and wishes she could make the bandages and the injuries go away, or the pain, just for long enough so that she can get away. She's braced herself for this, for his scorn and contempt, and Sakura is no coward, she'll reap what she sows. Yet, _yet_ she can't bring herself to look him in the face. Not this close, not when she'll be able to tell every flicker of anger as it races across his eyes.

* * *

><p>It was the worst thing Tsunade could have done to him, making him go into Sakura's room with the medicine. The jar of honey he grabbed on instinct had weighed far more than it should have as he carried the tray to her bed. Now, in here, with Sakura and close enough to see, to touch, he can't seem to get the picture of her eyes lit blue by the glow of crackling lightning out of his head. Someone must have imprinted it on the back of his eyes because, dammit, the memory is there every time he closes them.<p>

She'd looked frail and young and breakable lying in his bed, propped up by pillows against the headboard.

It isn't right; this Sakura does not, _cannot_, coexist with the tenacious kunoichi he knows her to be. It isn't right that he'd been the one to make her this way.

And then she'd decided to go and apologize.

His temper had risen before he could help it, and now Sasuke is rising over her, the sheets twisting under his clenching hands. Always, _always_ she is blaming herself, and the fact that she is injured does nothing to mitigate his anger. Rather, it only fuels the fire.

"Why are you _always __apologizing_? If you hadn't stepped in and taken a fucking _hole_ to your chest, who the fuck knows how out of hand that dumbass and I would've gotten? Why is it always _your_ fault? The world doesn't work that way. _You __can't __be __responsible __for __every __damn __thing __that __goes __wrong._"

Sasuke edges closer with every word, and by the time he finishes his sentence his voice has lowered to a rough, low hum. He is close enough to make out the small blue flecks in her eyes and the ring of darkest green—almost black—around her pupil. They dilate with his proximity, but the entire time, she doesn't close them or turn away. Instead, her spine straightens, gains a rigidity that it's been missing before, and her next words come out in a near hiss.

"_Isn't __that __what __we've __tried __to __tell __you __for __years __and _years_, __Sasuke-kun_?" She wields the suffix like a weapon, and the Sasuke back then, fuck, the Sasuke of two days ago would've stepped back, let his temper get the best of him, but him, no, he, _he_ had—

"I'm not the same person anymore, Sakura."

She flushes under his scrutiny and what he guesses is his nearness. It brings color back to her previously gray skin and her lips part, just barely, as she breathes heavy and hard. Sasuke doesn't move away.

He wants to kiss her again, he realizes. He wants to pull her against him and taste her breath, taste the honey on her tongue, to reaffirm that she is really alive. Sakura's eyes widen and Sasuke thinks she has guessed his intentions.

There is still a gaping hole mending on her side, though, one that he'd put there. Right now, he is the one that should apologize, and he sure as hell doesn't have the right to take any liberties with her.

Instead, Sasuke settles for dropping his head lightly onto Sakura's shoulder, pressing against the space there, dark and smelling faintly of vanilla. He is still, so still, arms braced on either side of her slight body and, so slowly that he thinks he might've imagined it, her hands tentatively wrap themselves around his biceps. And then, just as hesitantly, she leans into his touch, turning her face so that it presses against his hair.

Even though he can't see them, Sasuke is sure that her green eyes have slid close, and for a long time—for a very long time there is no sound but their even breathing as sunbeams inch across the wall.

* * *

><p>It takes another three days for Sakura to heal.<p>

It's a miraculously short time and, even with Tsunade's full arsenal of healing jutsu and Sakura's own power at her disposal, she will be recovered just enough to be moved back to Konoha. Tsunade, she can tell, is impatient, and Sakura is jittery at the prospect of home. She doesn't know what to expect, and Naruto won't be there with her on the journey back because Tsunade had sent him to Konoha angry and petulant a day after she'd woken up. He always got in the way, her Shishou said, but Sakura knew it was really so Naruto could make sure the right people got wind of her arrival first.

Sasuke stays with her for the entirety of the three days, but they only talk about neutral, inconsequential things if they talked at all. Most of the time it's not a _bad_ silence, she thinks as the rudimentary medical text he'd lent her blurs before her eyes. In the same chair that he's occupied for the better part of the last two days, Sasuke sits quietly reading the same book of poetry she'd dropped during his first visit. His legs are crossed and he takes up the space carelessly in the way that he always has, as either Sasuke or Kun, until his presence fills the room. His newly rediscovered chakra doesn't help, either, adding the slightest undercurrent of electricity to the air. Sakura is afraid that any flare of heat will create a spark and send the whole house up in flames. Biting her lip, she tries to concentrate on the words in front of her.

They'd…they'd come to an understanding of sorts after that afternoon. Though neither had mentioned what happened in the hush of the sunlight after he gently disentangled himself from her, the hostility from before is gone.

Sakura doesn't know what has passed, what has caused the change, but when Sasuke said he was a different person, he'd meant it. It was more than just the years spent as Kun that has dulled the sharpest edges of Sasuke's anger. There's something _else_.

Sakura bites her lip harder and finally lets the book she's been holding fall to her lap with a frustrated sigh. The impact causes an unpleasant twinge in her side and she lets out a pained huff before she can help herself.

Sasuke looks up and she catches the dredges of concern just before he's finished hiding it in the impassive lines of his brow.

Sakura hastily reassures him with a _nothing_, but Sasuke doesn't go back to his reading. Instead, his eyes stay trained on her and Sakura wants to look away, wants to at least close her own expression to him, but like every time his gaze had lingered during the past two days, she's left immobile with the sudden intensity of his expression.

After that first afternoon, after she'd breathed him in for so long that she doesn't think she can ever forget the way he smelled or the way he'd fit so perfectly in the juncture between her neck and shoulder, they hadn't touched again. Not physically, not really.

The brush of fingers when he hands her trays of food or medicine is inevitable, but what really leaves her heart in her throat is the way he touches her with his eyes.

The way he looks at her, the sheer focus of his stare—it's like he's trying to figure out something particularly frustrating and she has the answer.

They've come to a quiet understanding, and there's tentative peace, but Sakura knows not everything's resolved. She's okay with that, for now. And she thinks that for the first time maybe he is, too.

"Tsunade says I have two choices." His low voice cuts through the quiet.

Sakura straightens her back, carefully puts the book aside and looks at him with clear eyes.

She thinks she knows what's coming.

"I can either go back to Konoha now and face my trial as soon as they're ready for me, or stay here to serve an unspecified amount of strictly monitored probation time first." His eyes do not waver from hers. "The Hokage recommends the second, but she says it's ultimately my choice."

Sakura knows this is okay, that there are certain things that she cannot control, like hearts and souls and memories, like someone's past and someone else's future.

Her voice is strong when she asks, "And what did you choose?"

* * *

><p>Once again, Sakura stands in front of Sasuke except, this time, they are themselves. She's said her goodbyes to the Endo back at the house and Tsunade has gone on ahead into the village for supplies and to meet the squad deployed to escort them home.<p>

Like before, Sasuke remained elusive until she reached the glen at the fork of the road. And there, she finds him waiting for her.

Sakura smiles, and it is the most genuine it has been in a long, long time. "This isn't goodbye."

Sasuke doesn't so much as blink and Sakura knows he remembers his own words from before. He offers no reply besides a small dip of his head—his eyes somehow all the darker for being in the direct sunlight—and a soft _aa_.

And it's true, Sakura knows. This isn't goodbye. They will see each other again, whether it is weeks or months or years down the road.

_This __isn't __goodbye_.

Sakura—and Sasuke—have learned to live with that.

"I'll be looking forward to that," she continues. "To your next hello, I mean."

They stand there together for a minute, just breathing in the sunshine. Then there's the sound of movement, and she looks up to see Sasuke watching her. He wants to say something, she can tell, his mouth quirking the way it does when he has a declaration, a proclamation, a speech usually involving vengeance and dead brothers. This time, she thinks he has something different in mind.

But Sakura shakes her head, holds up a halting hand. "No. Save it, Sasuke-kun—" Her smile brightens. "—for when you come home."

Uchiha Sasuke looks almost taken aback, but then his expression changes, shifts into something almost resembling amusement.

"Aa," he says again, agreeing. "When I come home."

**fin**

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><p><strong>an: **Thanks again to Unicorn Paige and her wonderful beta-ing skills!

There's one more chapter coming up-just an epilogue-and then it's finished for real. I've actually had this ending in mind from the very beginning, it was just the in-between stuff that I had to figure out. I hope I've at least somewhat faithfully captured a realistic way that these two can come to terms!

Again, thank you for all your reviews, whether be it encouragement, concrit, or both! You're all great. :)


	10. Epilogue

**a/n:** Ack, a day late. Happy New Year everyone!

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><p><strong>Epilogue<strong>

Dawn is just breaking, and she watches as he looks up at the pale sky with dark eyes. He exhales, and she follows the curl of his breath in the cold.

"Are you sure? You can wait until spring, you know. The passes are going to be dangerous in winter."

He turns a little to glance at her, and even after all this time and a fiancé sometimes she is still struck dumb by his looks; he's a study in contrasts, and his ink black eyes and hair framed against the white of the snow pulls at something in her chest.

"I won't be going through the passes," he says, and she bites her lip to keep from saying anything more. She'd felt the distance growing between them year after year, little by little, but it's only now that she realizes how far apart they've come.

His eyes soften almost imperceptibly, and she knows he's promised to visit, to write, and to check up on her family, but again there's that distinction—_her _family now, not really his, and it stings. But it's the muted hurt of goodbye, and he's always kept his promises to her mother and father, so she knows that if he says he's going to visit, he will. She'll get nothing else from him, not after all the impassioned pleas and tantrums in the world, either then or now.

"I'll be going now." She nods and looks away as he begins forming signs with his hands. The only warning she gets is a barely discernible curve to his lips before he disappears in a haze of smoke.

Amaya has lived with Uchiha Sasuke-san for three long years, and it's finally time for him to head home.

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><p>When Sakura wakes up in the morning, face plastered to the report she'd been writing last night, the day feels just like any other. She shivers in the chilly air, wrinkling her nose at the window she'd forgotten to properly close last night. Today is a Saturday, and she's supposed to have the day off.<p>

Sakura looks down at her unfinished report and groans—_supposed to_ being the keywords here. She gets up, pushing her chair back from her desk and cracking her back as she does, picking up the empty mug and tripping over her own shoes in the process before she makes it to the kitchen. She hums as she washes the cup and fills the kettle, a habit that she'd shed when she was thirteen and had just picked up again. Today feels like any other day…today feels good.

She makes her breakfast and eats it as she listens to the world waking up around her, the birds and the children and the whistling wind. The morning is peaceful, and even though goose-bumps ripple across her skin in the wake of the cold, the quiet warms her soul. At her elbow sits a haphazard stack of letters, the red ribbon she usually uses to bundle them with half a counter away. The most recent letter dates from a week and a half ago.

A sudden clattering of tiles and scraping feet makes her wince, and she carefully puts down her mug of warm tea. Naruto's head pops up right outside her window, and she can only roll her eyes as he expertly unlatches the lock and slides inside.

"What would people say if they saw the new Hokage breaking and entering?" she says wryly.

"It's not like I'm wearing the pointy hat! No one's gonna recognize me— 'sides Sakura-chan, aren't you happy I came to see you?" He crosses the living room in a few bouncy steps and snatches the leftover onigiri from her plate.

Sakura shakes her head with a laugh, getting up with the newly empty dishes and dumping them in the sink. "_Well_ then esteemed Hokage-sama, you're going to be the one to do the dishes this time."

There's none of the bluster that she expects though, and when Sakura turns around she finds Naruto looking at her with serious eyes.

"You know what this means right, Sakura?"

She freezes, and there's no helping the way her gaze strays back to the modest pile of letters. Naruto doesn't miss the small movement, and his smile is a little knowing, a little self-deprecating. It's a habit that he's learned over the last few years, and Sakura is sorry that he ever had to at all. "So the bastard told you first? Figures."

There's a slight pause, and the rhythm of the conversation falters. But the Naruto's smile widens and he expertly sidesteps the careful reserve that's grown between the two whenever the subject of Sasuke came up, "Eh, Sakura-chan, what're you looking at me with that face for? Shouldn't you be happy? He's finally coming home!"

Sincerity laces his words, and Sakura can't help but answer with a grin of her own.

"I'm happy."

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><p><em>(Three years ago.)<em>

Sakura has been on probation for two weeks before Naruto comes to see her. Tsunade had had no choice _but_ to put her on extended leave, though she wasn't monitored and had no restrictions as long as she didn't leave the village.

She spent the first days in bed, drifting in and out of tired sleep. Ino dropped by on the third, bringing with her her mother's famous restorative soup and a stack of cheesy romance novels. The blonde didn't ask any questions and Sakura doesn't offer any answers.

They were in the middle of a heated debate on the merits of the protagonist in the book Ino was reading out loud to her when, face serious, she'd suddenly said, "I thought you were smarter than that, forehead."

Sakura's smile slipped before she shrugged, took another deliberate sip of soup and steered the conversation back to safer ground.

And the truth was—the truth was so did she. The problem though, wasn't her purported intelligence or lack thereof; where _he_ was concerned, the one thing Sakura could be counted on for was to always follow the demands of her heart and never logic, never reason.

But this time, she'd been the one to leave him, with both of their hearts intact and smiling. That, Sakura thought, had to be an accomplishment, had to be progress and maybe a turning point in the tired ways of their lives.

When Ino remarked on the _idiotic expression on your face, forehead_, Sakura just grinned harder and shoved the book back in her face with a _just keep on reading, pig._

She's alone when Naruto finally knocks on her apartment door, something that he hasn't done since when they were both fifteen. Sakura immediately stands from her seat on the couch, but she hesitates with his name halfway out of her mouth; the silence leaves her fidgeting. Naruto doesn't look like he quite knows what to do with himself either.

He finally closes the door behind him and lifts the bags he'd been carrying for her to see. With a tremulous smile, he clears his throat and says, "Sakura-chan, I, uh, I bought you ramen."

And this is also another start.

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><p>Sasuke hadn't given her the exact date of his arrival, but the way Naruto keeps grinning at her over his lunch makes her stomach turn. Sakura takes a careful bite of gyoza, ever aware of the constant hum of conversation in the crowded restaurant. She wants to ask, but the asking might make it into an untruth—like wishes that burned and fizzled out because you'd told. Besides, it's still "classified information", the fact that he would be coming back at all.<p>

Sakura isn't stupid, she knows that even though Naruto's the Hokage now, the Council—filled with the elders' lackeys after their deaths—still holds a measure of power over the older generation in the village. Naruto might have pardoned the last Uchiha, but there are still some that wouldn't hesitate to take "justice" into their own hands.

The clock in the small restaurant strikes twelve, and Sakura frowns at the still enthusiastically masticating blond.

"_Hokage-sama_, I think your lunch-break's over," she teases. Naruto looks up at the clock too, squinting like he's trying to remember something.

The urge to ask sits strong on her tongue.

"Ah, right, right," he mutters. "Uh, I guess I'll go back to the office. You enjoy your day off, okay Sakura-chan? Just don't, don't leave the village or do something stupid."

And before she can say anything, before her smile spills over, he's gone in a quick puff of smoke.

Sakura ends up grinning down at her half-eaten food.

Today's going to be a good day.

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><p>Sakura spends the rest of her afternoon running errands, little things like doing the laundry and picking up new scrolls at the library. She's kept to the same routine for nearly all her Saturdays, and today, today's no different at all. Instead of waiting by the gate with twisting hands, Sakura is walking through the market, picking at the scant vegetables and haggling over the best prices on fruit when she feels his approach.<p>

He's masked his signature to a low hum, but she recognizes the feel of it, and it's still electricity against her skin.

She waits, looking down at the neatly arrayed rows of out-of-season fruit, unwilling to turn, unwilling to—

He doesn't touch her, doesn't even have to say or do anything to let her know he's there, he just lets loose his chakra, lets it wash over her completely until Sakura feels like she's physically being pushed against the wooden stand, and then there's nothing she can do _but_ to turn around, anything to loosen the knot in her stomach, to—

He stands before her, cloaked and hooded in heavy winter clothes, and it's something she's been expecting, something that she's been steadily counting down to since she got one of his succinct, rare letters nearly two weeks ago, yet still, still she finds herself at a loss, and there are words that she needs to say that are on the tip of her tongue but she can't seem to unstick them from the roof of her mouth.

"Hello," he finally says, the two syllables careful, and she's just managed to open her mouth, to phrase the first word when there's an explosion of noise and Naruto's happy shout of _glad you made it back!_

Then there's the commotion as people start to realize who the hooded man is, and Naruto has brought old, reluctant friends. Suddenly there's no time for the words that had been about to tip from her tongue, no time to do more than smile at him and shrug, as if to say _what can you do? _and Sakura isn't even vaguely annoyed because for once, for once there'll be time for all of that later.

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><p><em>(Two and a half years ago.)<em>

She starts writing letters to him on a whim. Sakura's unimpressed with her own unoriginality, with how tired the gesture is, but she lets herself do it all the same, because unlike all the stories, these are letters that she'll eventually send. She writes the missives like he's someone who's still familiar to her, instead of the almost-stranger that she left behind. In them, she updates him on village gossip, on politics and all the missions she's missing out on because of her probation. She tells him how Tsunade's increasingly tired sighs worry her and she speculates on how long it'll take for Naruto to be announced as her successor. The letters are a way of tying him back to Konoha, to giving the village, to giving herself more weight than memories that he might or might not be able to recall.

Sakura sends them by civilian post, and she never really expects an answer back. It's Sasuke after all, and she has learned that the best way to deal with him was to just never harbor any expectations at all.

She gets his first letter two months after she sends hers.

* * *

><p>Naruto throws Sasuke a home-coming party. It's sort of ridiculous and almost everyone who's there wouldn't have come if the blond hadn't forced them to. There's too much alcohol and because Naruto had insisted on going to the riverside on the outskirts of the village, on top of everything else it is freezing too. In the end, the rest of the Rookie 9 leaves Sakura and Sasuke to deal with the mess, their passed out Hokage slung over the shoulder of one dangerously cheery Sai.<p>

Sakura doesn't mind as long she gets to beat up the idiot later.

"Sorry about all of this, I'm sure you didn't want to make a big fuss."

Sasuke shrugs from his spot next to her on the riverbank, watching as she happily sighs into a thermos of hot coffee. She stretches her legs, toes curling in the warmth of her boots. Her scarf hangs loosely around his bare throat and she smiles, remembering Sasuke's look of disgust when Naruto snatched the pink and white thing (a badly knitted gift from Ino) from her bag and threw it at the Uchiha after he sneezed for the third time in a row.

"I can't believe you're still wearing that," she begins conversationally.

She hears something like a noncommittal grunt and Sakura snorts, "I almost like it better when you were just Kun-san, at least back then you made an _effort_ at conversation."

She turns her head just in time to catch the last of his smile before it disappears, and even though smiling is something that he just _does_ now, she needs more time for it to not catch her by surprise.

Her lips automatically curl in response, and she studies him through the rising steam from her drink. He sits languid, limbs long and relaxed; the guard that Sasuke used to keep around himself is still there, but now it isn't so _exhausting_ to look at him anymore.

Sakura deconstructs planes and lines and the shadows that the setting sun throws against all his sharp angles, her eyes finishing their quiet slide up the length of his body to find him staring back at her. Her breath hitches, a flush painting her cheeks red.

Her exhale is a shaky plume of cold.

He looks at her for a long, long time, and Sakura measures each second against the heavy beats of her heart. It feels as if everything has slowed to this—to him looking at her, and the weight of his stare is an irrepressible thing, leaving her feeling out of breath, out of body, like the only reason she hasn't risen up off the earth is because of his keeping her there by sheer force of will.

Sasuke raises a hand and lays it slow, palm down, against her cheek. The touch is so light that if Sakura closes her eyes—if she closes her eyes she could imagine that he wasn't really there at all.

His thumb sweeps across the top of her cheek, his brows furrowing in a question asked, and the grit of his teeth, the rigid line of his jaw tells her all the things that he's never been able to put into his terse, formal letters.

A small noise escapes her, and she can't help but lean into his touch. The sound breaks the stillness of the moment, and suddenly Sasuke is dipping his head and crossing the distance between them, not of miles or space but of time and memory and opportunities wasted, of regrets and could-have-been's and _oh_. _Oh_, his mouth is moving against hers now, slow and lazy and the heat of it rips straight into her heart.

It's nothing like their first kiss—there's no forced dominance, no hurry or point to prove. This is kissing for the sake of it, this is kissing because he wants to, because she wants to, and he's licking his way past her lips and she can taste him—she can taste him and feel him and the hand that's slid down to rest on the curve of her hip. She moans, the sound loud in the newly descended darkness, and she has no idea if they're really alone but she doesn't care, she doesn't care about anything besides pressing herself closer—

Sasuke shifts, lifting her neatly into his lap and angles his head so that the kiss deepens, and there are no fireworks or dramatic music but Sakura thinks that this _is so much better_because it feels just like coming home, like finally stopping after a long, long journey and putting your feet up at the end of a bad day, like a cup of warm tea and listening to the rain pound down on your roof. Then she stops thinking at all.

They kiss until she feels like her lungs will burst, and even then Sasuke only pulls away far enough to press his forehead against hers, to drag the tip of his nose down the line of her own until their eyes meet.

"You're crying," he says thickly, and Sakura is surprised by the dampness hot on her cheeks—she hasn't cried in years, but for the first time she finds that it's something she doesn't mind at all.

"Welcome home," she says with a wet laugh, repeats it again and again as she realigns her lips with his, as she presses her hands against his quickly beating heart.

And Sasuke answers just once, between one kiss and the next, quiet and long overdue—

_tadaima._

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><p><strong>note:<strong> Tadaima is the Japanese expression for _I'm back_, _I'm home_, etc.

**updated a/n:** Thanks to all of you for sticking with me for so long! I hope this has been an enjoyable read for...the majority of you? As always, last thoughts are appreciated and I'll probably be looking over all the unbeta'd chapters for revisions later. :) This has been my longest fic to date, and also one where I think my writing's grown the most. I'm beyond thankful to have readers like you guys that are always up for giving me some encouragement and lots and lots of concrit. Thanks again!


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